


Different and Cool: The Series

by RisanF



Category: Original Work
Genre: Coming of Age, F/M, Free Will, Geeks, Illustrations, Junior High, Manga Style, Normal Guy/Nerd Girl, Peer Pressure, nerd girl, young adult
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-01-23 04:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 45,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12499108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RisanF/pseuds/RisanF
Summary: Fourteen-year-old Andrew Champion tackles a special class project with the geekiest girl in school, and his life changes forever. A coming-of-age story that mixes anime aesthetics with Wonder Years-style drama (with a little bit of Harry Potter thrown in)





	1. Different and Cool (Monday)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andy is given a new class project.

  
  
         Across the rolling landscape, Starlight City shone in the sun like a jeweler's best collection. A clean, radiant metropolis, it teetered on the edge of progress and past, a contrasting conglomeration that recalled a vision of a retro-future. On the outskirts of town, inching its way into the valleys, Starlight Jr. High and the teachers within provided the engines of knowledge that would carry its students into the world. And just behind the classroom's brick walls, one such teacher was trying to give those engines a kick-start, thrusting them onto an open road full of twists and turns.  
  
         "And that, my class, concludes this period's dissertation on free-will," a tall, black man of thirty was finishing up, peering over his spectacles at his audience. Setting down a large textbook titled Philosophy Today, he folded his arms behind his back, his trim beard giving the gesture a stately image. "Questions, anyone?" he asked in a brawny baritone that bled the energy of a man with much power. His eagle eyes swept over the room carefully, able to pick out any student eager to contribute.  
  
         Of which there were none.  
  
         The twenty or so students before him were unresponsive, to say the least. Already worn down from 1st Period Algebra, the thirteen and fourteen-year-olds of the class had little enthusiasm for the man's lesson. Mr Clark frowned in particular at the desk in row three, fourth from the right. This was where a green-maned lad of fourteen was practically lying on his desk, his shocking swath of hair a sharp contrast with his lethargic, I-really-need-to-sleep-right-now disposition.  
  
         Andrew Champion picked with disinterest at a chewed eraser, pulling at the rubbery nub until it threatened to tear off from the rest of his pencil. Looking down at the lazy arrangement of minimal note-taking on his desk, he let the lecture flow over his head like a stream over so many stones. With his cheek in his hand and his head to the side, he idly looked away from his mangled writing implement to the clock, wondering when lunchtime was. Food for the mind was something ill-swallowed these days, and now, he felt only prepared to handle food for the body.  
  
         SLAM! a long, thin object came crashing down on the desk, making the boy drop his pencil like it was chewing on him. Looking up from the yardstick slapped in front of his face, Andy found a dark and very menacing figure before him, puncturing his soul with a sensation not unlike the fear of God. "Mr. Champion, if you're not too bored from my lecture on free-will and its proponents," the teacher began, tapping the flat end of his yardstick against his shoulder. "Perhaps you could make use of it and try staying awake in class."  
  
         A few students let out some light titters, whether it was due to Andy's humiliation or the teacher's rebuke, Andy wasn't sure. The boy merely let out a long sigh, and propped himself up in an emulation of studiousness to placate the teacher. Still, Andy's gaze was not exactly level, and he was once more feeling rather out-of-it. He tried to stiffen up, letting the shock of the teacher's directive jolt through his system to keep him awake, but at best, he was a dripping wax statue, good for ten more minutes of holding the illusion of liveliness.  
  
         Free-will. That's what this subject was about. With mixed blessings from the senior staff, Professor Trent Clark had started a special enrichment program for Starlight Jr. High, about the philosophical dilemma of free-will vs. determinism. Normally given to high school students, this special elective was meant to open up young minds and awaken them to higher levels of learning.  
  
         As such, it flew completely over his head.  
  
         Andy breathed heavily into the air, his eyelids falling for the moment. What business did he have tackling stuff like philosophy and free-will? He was fourteen and no wunderkind; the biggest decision-making he did was between the green or orange gelatin in the school lunch line (he liked the green gelatin). It was enough for Andy to get a C and get though the day, leaving the more complicated stuff to the wise men on the northern mountains (philosophy, not the gelatin picking).  
  
         "I want all of you to give your best effort," Mr. Clark was saying, directing his attention back toward the rest of the class. "Your assignment for the rest of the week is to exercise your free-will in a way that defies everyday routine. Then, write a hundred-word summary of your thoughts and feelings leading to your decisive actions. Again, any questions?"  
  
         And again, the class was silent...save for the frantic scribbling of one young pigtailed girl in the front row, who had been taking notes for the last five minutes. Her large, horn-rimmed glasses were nearly falling off her nose, and they did almost fall off her nose as she bolted up in her chair, raising a jittering hand in an "oo, oo, oo" sort of way. "Ms. Reichardt?" the teacher prompted, smiling at her participation.  
  
         "What if you're a determinist?" the girl asked, with earnest eyes behind her glasses.  
  
         If Mr. Clark was shaken by the challenge to his central concept, the man didn't show it. "In that case, I simply trust you'll find a way to approach this assignment from a deterministic point of view," he supplied, making a circular motion with his hand.  
  
         "But, what if we're just like any other insect or bug, and we do only what we're programmed to do?" she insisted, her wide-eyed stare never lessening in the slightest. "I mean, an ant never rebels against the queen, does it?"  
  
         "Perhaps you might explain the difference between humans and ants?" he suggested, putting his hands on his hips.  
  
         "And what if all life is just protons and neutrons interacting with each other in a predetermined and unchangeable way...?"  
  
         A brown-haired boy practically rocketed from his seat. "You're holding up class, Reichardt!" he hissed, glaring at the pigtailed girl.  
  
         "Terrible Tarah," another student groaned, rolling his eyes. At this, about a dozen spitballs and crumpled up paper wads flew at the girl from all angles, testament to the highly bored and volatile class.  
  
         "Hey!" she squeaked, shielding herself from the bombardment of makeshift projectiles.  
  
         "Enough!" Mr. Clark's booming voice broke through the rowdy behavior like lightning through thorny underbrush. Quick as wildfire, the students ceased tormenting their classmate and slotted back into their seats. The fire in the man's eyes seemed to burn with the afternoon light pouring from the blinds. It was as if he was some sort of samurai schoolteacher, ready to test the edge of his yardstick on any unsavory miscreant.  
  
         Letting out an exasperated breath, Mr. Clark moved to the door. "The paper is due Friday, first five minutes of class. There will be no turning in assignments late." Opening the door, he deftly stepped to his left. "You may go."  
  
         Like a dam breaking, the students poured out of the door en masse. Though Mr. Clark had moved aside, he found he had to flatten himself against the wall to avoid being trampled by the herd of unruly students. Soon, the classroom had all but cleared out, leaving a lifeless quality in place of its previous youthful energy. Only two students were left: Andy, gathering his books, and the girl Tarah, still struggling to pick out spitwads from her hair.  
  
         Leaving his yardstick behind like a warrior setting aside his sword, Mr. Clark walked between the desks until he arrived at Andy's. At first sight of the tall man, Andy shrunk down in his seat like a whacked mole, finding nowhere to hide. A tense moment passed before Andy realized that the man hadn't come to eviscerate him. "Do...you need something from me, Mr. Clark?" he tried, hoping to phrase his question so that it didn't sound too impetuous.  
  
         "Andy, your grades have been slipping." Mr. Clark started without preamble. "This is the second time I've caught you nodding off in here. This class may only be an elective, but it's an important credit all the same."  
  
         "I'm...sorry, Mr. Clark," Andy said, rubbing his head with a grimace. "It's just this class is so tough, I can't concentrate."  
  
         "Well, you need to learn to concentrate," the teacher continued, a certain warmth offsetting his bluntness. "This assignment may very well be your last chance to maintain your C average. Any more slip ups, and you're likely to repeat Gym next quarter, which you'll recall as the class you'd be taking in place of mine."  
  
         Andy gulped at this prospect. He had no real desire to take Gym again after his experience in 7th Grade; the wedgie-incident was still too fresh in his mind.  
  
         Mr. Clark paid his theatrics no heed, and stepped back from the boy with a short sigh. With his back facing Andy, he turned his head to peer at him through tiny spectacles. "I meant what I said earlier. Use your free-will, and you'll decide not only your own grade, but your own fate as well."  
  
         Andy started at this, the glimmer of an image tugging at the corner of his mind. The past two years of Jr. High torments fell away way to reveal the imprint of an adventurous childhood, full of passions, exploits, and triumphs. Mr. Clark's strength of spirit recalled a time where Andy felt he could do anything, be anything, even if just in his imagination. All too soon, the memory faded, and he was left with the plain classroom decorations approved by the School Board, bringing with it the heavy aura of middle school life.  
  
         While Andy grappled with these contrasting emotions, Mr. Clark had already moved half-way to the front of the classroom, where the door stood ajar after the rush of kids. Stopping at Tarah's desk, the bespectacled man turned a soft eye towards the gunked-up girl, as she yanked haplessly on a pigtail. Brushing a few spitballs off her head, he looked between Andy and Tarah, as if mulling over something in that warrior-scholar mind of his. Then, he picked up his textbooks and headed for the hall, letting the door swing shut behind him.  
  
         As the door closed with a slam, Andy continued to sit idly in his desk, his fingers once again flipping a pencil between them. The second hand of the clock ticked away the time he spent in contemplation, mulling over Mr. Clark's words and the subtext behind them. Soon, even Tarah had left the room, taking with her a multitude of books that no one really needed throughout their day. This left the boy all by his lonesome, contemplating the memory he had recalled, talking to himself like a hero from an old adventure novel he had picked up as a kid.  
  
         "My own fate..."  
  
         He didn't know it at the time, but these three words would form the bedrock of Andy's thoughts throughout the week, outside of Mr. Clark's class and into the wild, dangerous world of adolescence.  
  
-  
-  
*****  
-  
-  
  
         The cafeteria was a crowded place, it was true. A steady stream of slightly-hyper students were lining up alongside the buffet, receiving whatever forsaken refuse the cooks had decided to dig up today. The rest of the students were cluttered at several round tables placed sporadically around the spacious, yet swarming room. With the teachers stationed throughout the tables, it made for a system that succeeded in keeping the students from bouncing off the walls, if only barely.  
  
         "Dude, I've neva' seen anyone get so much raggin' from Samurai Trent," a blond boy with hair over his left eye said to Andy, picking up a big, smelly burrito to jam into his toothy maw.  
  
         "You're such a bone head, Champion," a silver-haired lad added in, slurping on a soda bought from the machine next to the door. "If you'd just nod every once and awhile, you'd be able to get away with dozing in class."  
  
         "Sorry, guys," Andy said, shining an apple on his shirt. "It's just hard to keep up with all this stuff sometimes."  
  
         "Only for you," Silver Hair said.  
  
         Andy released a put-upon sigh, continuing to wipe the apple free of any excess dirt that had accumulated. The silver and blond-haired boys, Justin and Slick respectively, tended to be less than supportive whenever they heard that the third wheel of their group had been clogging up their system. With Slick, it was mostly to derive a good laugh at his expense, if the laugh could be found. And as for Justin...well, he was just plain critical sometimes.  
  
         Not exactly the most supportive chums in the world, but they did well enough in a pinch.  
  
         Trying to get them off the subject, he changed tact. "So, what are you guys going to do for your free-will assignment?" he asked in what he hoped was a casual tone, biting into his mac apple with a resounding snap.  
  
         "What are you talking about, Champion?" Justin muttered, regarding his can of cola with a distracted eye. "Whatever we want."  
  
         "Yeh," Slick chimed in, his mouth still half-full of burrito stuffing. "This is our chance to pull off all the stuff we've always wanted to do, this time with the whole faculty backin' us up!"  
  
         "Just think of it," Justin started, putting his hand to his chin in a show of deviousness. "Sneaking into the girl's locker room..."  
  
         "Spray painting the statue of Saint Starlight..." Slick added, leaning forward with a slurmy smile smeared with special sauce.  
  
         "Putting out the tires of Old Windbag Magee..."  
  
         "Buying magical girl animated shows at half-price..."  
  
         "Stealing the locker key out of the...what?" Justin suddenly snapped to attention, giving his friend the evil eye.  
  
         The blond-haired boy started at bit at Justin and Andy's strange looks, then scooted away slightly. "Uh, they're for my little sisters?" he suggested, making a shrugging motion with his shoulders.  
  
         Slick was saved from having to explain his proclivities by a high-pitched, slightly chirpy voice. "Um, Andrew Champion?"  
  
         Andy jerked up at the sound of his name, looking to where he had first heard the voice. His face visibly fell when he recognized who it was. Clad in gray overalls, a myopic pigtailed girl was standing just to the side of him, her eyes wide and unassuming. Though her glasses were so thick, one could hardly see her eyes, anyway.  
  
         Glancing at his friends on either side, he then turned back towards the girl with the fakest smile he could've possibly conjured up. "Uh, Reichardt, right?" he tried, his lip curling up to show a bit of gum above his teeth.  
  
         Tarah nodded, paying his antics no heed. "Professor Clark said you needed extra help on this assignment," she said enthusiastically, speaking like a chipmunk in a position of authority. "I'm going to be your partner for the free-will project!"  
  
         Andy's eyes bugged out slightly as he fought to retain this new information without freaking out. "W-what?" he stammered, lurching away from the girl as if she had bubonic plague. "P-partner?"  
  
         She seemed oblivious to this, too. "That's right!" she answered cheerfully, with a nod of her head. "We'll be working together on this so we both can do well." Her glasses fogged over as she got more and more excited. "I've never had a partner before!" She put a hand on the boy's shoulder, as he fought the urge to recoil. "I have all sorts of scientific research we can try to get ahead of the rest, like how bugs can sense timid people and pick those people to bite!"  
  
         Andy burbled out something in-between a gasp and a gurgle. "R-really?" he managed to force out, just as his right eye was developing a slight tic.  
  
         Tarah continued in spite of his hesitation. "Well, I guess I'll see you later!" she chirped, mercifully cutting the "conversation" short. With a bounce in her step, she moved on back towards her own table in the lunchroom, vanishing into the crowd.  
  
         Andy watched her go with a dazed expression, having been hit with way too much for one school day. Then, with only a few snickers as forewarning, he felt the added weight of his two friends looming over him. "Looks like Andrew Champion's got a date with Terrible Tarah!" Slick laughed, throwing an arm around the boy's shoulder.  
  
         "Rock on, Champion," Justin mocked, making a thumbs-up motion.  
  
         Andy looked back and forth between his brutal buddies, wondering which one of them could possibly be convinced to give him support. Finding neither to be sufficient, he stared straight down the middle of the lunch table, and softly banged his head against it.  
  
-  
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*****  
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-  
  
         Lunch passed into 3rd Period, 3rd into 4th, and then it was time to leave Starlight Jr. High for home. A medium-sized Joltswagon pulled up to the carpool around 3:15, rocking slightly with its old, automotive age. It waited patiently among the kids as Andy gathered up his backpack and hustled into the vehicle as if it were an escape pod from a doomed starship. Then, with a sputter of exhaust, that escape pod was launched, zooming away from the lot and off towards the main road.  
  
         Andy watched with relief as the school sank into the distance, falling behind the hills like a sinking city. He turned around towards the front of the car, where he had a better view of his ever-changing environment. The trees made for a comforting blanket as they whizzed against the sky, enveloping the car in a sea of brown, green, and blue. It was like some deity had heard the boy's call for friendlier skies, seeking to comfort him with a cornucopia of calming color.  
  
         It had been a long day, to say the least. Justin and Slick had made it Prerogative #1 to tease him about Tarah all day, right up to carpool. It made no difference that he had hardly even spoken to the dorky girl before today; as far as they were concerned, Andy had been dating her since the beginning of time. It boggled his mind how easily this notion infested their minds, and he only hoped the disease didn't spread itself among the rest of his peers.  
  
         Andy arranged himself as comfortably as his seat belt would allow, and sunk into the car seat with a long sigh. As the boy struggled to melt into the treated leather, his dedicated driver chanced a brief look behind her. "Something the matter, Andy?" she asked, turning back towards the windshield.  
  
         He made a noise that sounded like a cross between a moan and a snort. "I've had better days, Aunt Mary," he admitted.  
  
         The young lad placed his hands on his stomach and looked up towards the open sunroof. "I'm supposed to come up with something special to do for my Philosophy enrichment class," he explained. "An exercise of free-will, that's what Mr. Clark is saying."  
  
         "Free-will?" Mary exclaimed. "How exciting! It sounds like your professor is a real go-getter."  
  
         Andy chuckled bitterly, shaking his head. "It's really not as great as it sounds," he said. "They're making us do this weird work, but I'm just trying to get through this year without ending up a laughingstock like in Gym, Now I'm stuck with Tarah Reichardt for a study-buddy, and the guys won't let me hear the end of it, What Mr. Clark wants...it's just a waste of time."  
  
         "Oh, but there's nothing wasteful about free-will," she insisted, easing the steering wheel towards the left. "It's something you have every day. Mr, Clark is just giving you a chance to express it in ways you haven't thought of before."  
  
         After making sure the intersection was clear, Mary quickly dug into the purse on the passenger seat for some unknown object. Coming up with a peppermint, she pinched the object between two fingers, and brought the stick back into first gear again.  
  
         They had been driving for about half-a-minute when Andy started talking again. "It just...kinda hurts my head thinking about it," he murmured, almost to himself. "I mean, I guess I have free-will, but it doesn't seem to affect anything with me. I mean, I still go to school everyday and I still worry about the same old things. What's so free about that?"  
  
         The woman shook her head in disbelief. "Andrew, there's free-will in every aspect of life," she told him as she rounded the turn. Coming upon a straightaway, she took a second to place her procured object on the empty ashtray: a small peppermint. "Okay, there's a peppermint," she stated, a subtle smile on her lips. "What are you going to do?"  
  
         "Huh?" Andy was a bit flabbergasted at the puzzle presented to him. He took a closer look at the peppermint, as if it was going to sprout legs and start disco-dancing. "What do you mean?"  
  
         "Do you choose to take the peppermint, or not?" she repeated.  
  
         The boy struggled to keep from rolling his eyes. "It's a peppermint," he said, losing interest in this thread of conversation fast. "Of course I'm going to take it. See Aunt Mary? It's meaningless."  
  
         "Ah, but no one's making you take it," Mary said pointedly, making a small motion with her finger. "You've got to do that on your own."  
  
         As the car swung through a turn in the subdivision, Andy continued staring straight ahead in confusion. "I don't get it."  
  
         "Maybe you're feeling sick that day," she began, keeping her eyes carefully on the road. "Maybe you distrust it on grounds of it being so close to an ashtray. Even the simplistic situation can yield multiple outcomes depending on what you decide to do. People aren't that easy to manipulate."  
  
         The car was rolling up to an intersection, a crossover between Lolo Drive and Kirby Parkway. After coming to a stop, Mary made the turn onto Kirby, dodging a pothole that the city hadn't patched up. "Andy, life's no different than you and the peppermint," she continued, slowing the car down to around five mph. "The stakes may be higher, but it's all a simple decision, once you learn to put your mind to it."  
  
         Andy's face knotted up in confusion, his eyebrows twisting into an awkward configuration. "If you say so," he assented, shrugging off his doubts with a flex of his shoulders.  
  
         "I do say so!" Aunt Mary hooted jovially as she turned the Joltswagon into their driveway. "I do!"  
  
         Andy, for his part, pondered on whether or not to pluck the proffered peppermint from its perch. He felt railroaded by circumstance all day, and hadn't given any thought to whether or not the little things in life added up. Could even simple decisions change the course of his life, and if so, which ones were the right ones? It was a thought that lingered at the corner of his mind as he prepared to tackle the free-will project, the abandoned peppermint in the ash tray awaiting his decisions in the upcoming days.  
  
-  
-  
  
Next Up- Different and Cool- Part 2 (Tuesday)


	2. Different and Cool (Tuesday)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andy works his own agenda into the project.

         The exhaust beat steadily on the boy's legs as the Joltswagon left carpool for the open road. He watched the car flash behind a wall of trees before it disappeared altogether.  
  
         Andy stood before Starlight Jr. High with considerable trepidation, gripping the strap of his backpack tightly. He was still contemplating Aunt Mary's peppermint riddle, but had made no headway, and still had no clue on what he was supposed to do for Mr. Clark's assignment. Worst still, he was back in school, where Justin and Slick were sure to deride him for his failure. Academicians they were not, but they always let him know when he was behind in some way.  
  
         And yet he knew he had to give it a shot. The peppermint wasn't going to eat itself, and Andy wanted to get moving in some sort of direction. Creating and rejecting ideas for the entire morning, Andy resolved that he would just have to come up with something on the fly. Hopefully something that wouldn't get him in too much trouble with his friends.  
  
         Stalling for a moment at the driveway, he took the building in like a mouse takes in a lion. Then he grit his teeth, gathered up his book bag, and made for the school.  
  
         Which, today, was quite a different place.  
  
         Andy edged off to the side to make way for a classmate coming up from behind, who was currently wearing a large fedora on his head. Tromping over to the side of the schoolyards, the boy leaned against a tree and folded his arms, scanning the terrain for prey. After spying a rabbit, he took off after it, brandishing his belt like a whip. "Why does it have to be rabbits!?" he cried out as he ran off onto the baseball field, his pants loosening around his waist.  
  
         It was like this everywhere he looked. All around him were students doing strange and unusual things, like throwing cards at people and jump-roping right into the school. Two boys were even caught in a wrestling match with a teacher, trying to take down the man with a series of headlocks and full nelsons. It was clear they were losing; the teacher happened to know a few things about wrestling, judo, and a whole bunch of stuff in between.  
  
         Andy stumbled haphazardly through the crowd before spying Justin and Slick, sizing up the crazy situations, too cool for school. "What's going on here?" he asked the two, running over to them as a means of seeking shelter against the storming students.  
  
         "Mr. Clark's little pet project made a splash," Slick commented, lightly combing the hair covering his eye so that resembled the swath of a spookhouse curtain. "Everybody's getting into it and goin' wild."  
  
         "Everybody's acting like a dork, you mean," Justin grumbled, looking over his peers with extreme distaste. "This is so uncool."  
  
         A monster card (the type featuring names like Grand Silver Gigatex) went flying out of nowhere into the midst of their small group. Andy, Justin, and Slick made way for the group of seventh graders rushing up, who were laughing as they carried their monster summoning game to a whole new level.  
  
         "So uncool," Justin reaffirmed, shaking his head in disdain.  
  
         Andy looked over at the card players with confusion. Despite the silliness of their actions, they seemed to be having fun, so he had a hard time agreeing with Justin. Keeping his comments to himself, he instead opted to change the subject. "So...what are you guys doing for the free-will project?" he asked.  
  
         Justin blinked a bit, then glanced both ways to make sure no one was paying attention. Then, he leaned in close and gave Andy his first real smile, albeit a sneaky one. "We got a special thing in store for the girls in Gym," he whispered, looking like a wolf stalking a flock of sheep.  
  
         "Yeh." Slick sidled next to his friend and thrust his thumbs towards his chest. "Those cute chicky-boos are gonna see the full swingin' hipness of Slick C. Limestone."  
  
         Andy nodded like a broken bobble-head, reflexively backing away from the amorous duo. Maybe he was slow, but he never could understand their obsession with girls...  
  
         A swish of green hair caught the corner of his vision, turning the boy's mind away from his accession of his friends' fancies...and into a fancy all his own. As Andy whirled away from his group, a lovely girl perhaps a little older than himself filled his vision, popping into the center of his thoughts with a long, full mane of green hair and bright, gleaming eyes. A cap sat lightly on her head, with the words "TAB" printed on the front and two demon-bat wings sticking out from the sides. All of this led up to an image of a tomboyish, yet extremely vivacious babe, able to play carelessly with the boys' hearts while kicking their butts in every sport offered by the school.  
  
         Justin caught Andy's ogling and rolled his eyes. "She's out of your league, Champion," he said to the other boy, his tone touched with a not-so-subtle warning.  
  
         "It could happen," Andy insisted, never breaking his gaze for a second.  
  
         "Yeah, when my grandma wins the All Starlight Beauty Pageant." Slick snorted into the cold morning air. "And she was ugly at twenty."  
  
         Andy half-ignored his friend and continued to contemplate the distant girl, who was admiring the basketball twirling on her finger. An idea was coming quickly to mind, his eyes widening reflexively. "As a matter of fact," he began, his eyes now tweaked with determination. "For my free-will exercise, I'm going to talk to Maru Mari by the end of this week." He slowly put his hands on his hips with a short smile; shy but unrepentant.  
  
         The other two were less than impressed by this declaration. "Whatever," Justin moaned, waving him off and turning his back on him. "You'll never pull it off."  
  
         "Yeah," Slick agreed, though with a tad more softness than the cold boy. "You sure you don't wanna go tour the girls' changing room? Adventure of a lifetime, dude."  
  
         "I'm sure." Andy smiled, letting his bravado get even higher. He turned back towards the duo. "Don't you worry about a thing," he continued to reassure them. "You're going to see an all new me. No more wimpy waffling for Andy Champion..."  
  
         "Excuse me, guys," a soft soprano broke into his monologue, cutting him off. The boy looked up from his boasting at the source of this disruption, and as a consequence felt his heart leap into his throat. Mari was standing right there with her hands on her hips, smiling brightly at the trio. For the second time this day, Andy was awestruck, perplexed...and completely overwhelmed as far as his mental faculties were concerned.  
  
         Mari raised an eyebrow momentarily at the boy's inaction, a slightly bewildered expression on her face. After waving her hand to get his attention, she next pointed at an object rolling at the boy's feet. It was the basketball she was playing with earlier, which had somehow fallen inside the trio's inner circle...not that he had noticed. Justin and Slick, however, had gotten the idea, and quickly stepped aside, with Slick pulling the lovelorn Andy along with him.  
  
         Smoothly, the girl entered into the space the three boys had left for her. Bending over briefly, she scooped the ball up into her arm, tucking it against her side. "Thanks," she responded, straightening the bill of her cap with her free hand. And then, she was running back towards her girlfriends, her green hair tossing behind her like a flag of a victorious freedom fighter.  
  
         After Mari had departed, Slick slipped over to Andy's side, a twisting smirk on his face. "Some syrup to go with your waffle, Andy-boy?" he snickered, leaning lightly on the boy's shoulder.  
  
         Andy looked down at the pavement, feeling a hot flush flow to his face. "I still got...four days," he murmured to himself.  
  
-  
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*****  
-  
-  
  
         The confines of the school were alive with the crackle of adolescent chatter, most of it frank and unabashed. In Starlight Jr. High, there was a fifteen minute break between second and third periods, where the students were free to wander the halls until the ring of the next bell. Many of the students used the time to talk to friends, complain about teachers, and perhaps discuss plans for pranks on said teachers.  
  
         Andrew Champion had better ideas.  
  
         The boy was waiting behind the corner of the wall, his expression a cross between a big-game hunter and a peeping tom. He was careful to keep from overextending himself into the hallway, and anyone who looked his way would only see a fluff of sea-green hair. Within his sights was, again, Maru Mari, posting a bulletin for soccer tryouts on a corkboard. Her eyes glowing with eagerness, she was completely unaware of the situation she was in, just like a deer in the sights of a shotgun...held by a one-year-old with no fine motor control.  
  
         "C'mon, Andy," he urged himself under his breath, gripping the corner of the wall tighter. "You can do this."  
  
         The girl was just about finished placing her notice, and Andy knew he had no more time left to procrastinate. Steeling his muscles, he prepped himself like an Olympic runner starting the 100 Meter Dash. The boy's gaze heated up, as if he was going to start shooting lasers from his eyes at any moment. Then, robot-like, he began to move into the heat of battle.  
  
         "Hi, Andrew!" A chirping soprano crashed in his eardrums. With his nerves twisting like licorice whips, he quickly turned around to find Tarah lurking behind him, her arms behind her back. "W-what are you doing?" he managed to get out, stiffening up as if braking a bicycle within three inches.  
  
         "I needed to talk to you about..." The girl halted her dialogue to look beyond him, where Mari was. "Are you peeping on her or something?" she inquired, lurching over his shoulder. "That's kind of a gross thing to do. Though I guess some girls might like that."  
  
         "Ah, um..." The boy was practically panicked by her insinuations. "That was..." He suddenly jerked away from her and retreated completely behind the corner, where Mari couldn't see him. "What did you say you wanted again?" he tried, rubbing the back of his head nervously.  
  
         "Professor Clark wants us to work together on this project, right?" Tarah began without preamble, her face glowing with earnestness. "Can I come over to your house tonight? We can get more work done that way."  
  
         "T-tonight?" Andy stammered out, scootching away from her as if she was a pit bull with rabies.  
  
         "Yeah!" She smiled. "My Dad's fumigating the house from the lizard infestation, so you can't come over right now. I told him lizard were our friends, and are only looking for food, but he doesn't like them much."  
  
         "W-well, tonight's not really a good night, y'see, I got a lot of work to do in Algebra and there's some chores to be done..." The boy's mind was racking itself for any excuse it could find. He really didn't want Justin and Slick knowing that the school nerd had gone over to his house.  
  
         At the end of Andy's babbling, Tarah's face had fallen until it practically hit the floor. "Oh," she murmured, bolstering a look of unhappy confusion. "I guess I'll ask you tomorrow, then." With her head lowered, the girl shuffled on down into the halls, her hands dangling loosely by her sides. Andy was crestfallen by the girl's aura of depression, his own face sporting a frown.  
  
         "...hey, how about Wednesday?" he suddenly piped up, saying the first thing that had come to mind.  
  
         Tarah halted mid-step and turned on her heel, her pigtails flaying outwards. "Really?" she said hopefully, a jubilant spark dancing behind her spectacles.  
  
         An embarrassed flush took over his face, as the situation was quickly becoming much more heated than he originally had in mind. "Well, I don't have homework on my hard classes that day..." Andy said, trying to put a damper on her excitement.  
  
         This did little to quell Tarah's good mood. "Okay, Andrew!" she cheered. "We'll have our study date on Wednesday!"  
  
         Her words brought on a renewed sweat in Andy, as he suddenly felt the presence of the rest of the students in the hallway. "Uh, could you not say 'date?'" he said, quickly looking back and forth for anyone watching them.  
  
         His nervousness somehow went over the girl's head. "Why?" she asked, putting her hands on her hips.  
  
         "He doesn't want anyone to know how much he loves you," a slippery voice squirmed in from behind the two. Andy jerked around to find Justin folding his arms in a 'well, well, well' sort of pose. His smirk was a razor edge carved into his face, preparing to cut the boy down to size. "Right, Champion?"  
  
         "It's a dorkapalooza!" Slick materialized from behind Justin, spreading his arms as if he were some showboat announcer. "Nerds in love! Your thoughts please?" He thrust his pencil in front of their faces like a microphone, waiting for insider comment.  
  
         Andy fidgeted like mad within the wrath of his fiends for friends, trying to figure out some quick means of escape. He had almost decided upon the appropriate path of retreat when he saw a figure that now filled him with dread instead of love. Mari had dropped her task at the bulletin board to move into the scene, an interested shine in her eye. "You two make a funny couple," she said, her bemused smile a sharp contrast to his own feeling of abject horror.  
  
         Andy's eyes darted back and forth between Mari, Justin, Slick, and Tarah. The boys looked like they were going to bust their guts all over the floor in peals of laughter. Mari was cocking her head like a puppy dog that had just heard a strange noise. Tarah was oddly pensive, leaning away from the guys and looking to Andy for help. With all things considered, he had decided on a single course of action, one that he knew he could not deter from.  
  
         "See ya, Tarah," he said quickly, mustering up a quick smile for her benefit. Then ZIP! he was off towards the other end of the school, leaving the four behind in a cloud of dust.  
  
         "Wait, hold up!" Slick called out after him, shaking a piece of paper he had plucked from the bulletin board. "Do her glasses smash your face when you make out? Inquiring minds want to know!"  
  
         "The press is waiting, Champion." Justin snickered, slowly following after Andy with the blond boy.  
  
-  
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*****  
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         "I just can't do it," Andy was complaining later, as he picked at his food with a fork. "I tried, but it's too much trouble."  
  
         "Oh, Andy, it can't be all that bad," Aunt Mary said, lowering her own fork and looking at the boy with a slight droop to her face.  
  
         "But it is," he insisted. "The day was a disaster. And I don't think it's going to get any easier."  
  
         "Hum." The woman sighed with a disappointed air, not so much with the boy as with the situation.  
  
         The family: Andy, Aunt Mary, Uncle Noah, and Grandpa Moses, was sitting around the table for their evening meal. It was Salisbury steak night, an all-time favorite in the small household. Everybody in the family was a hearty eater, so there were generous portions on all of the plates along with large helpings of mashed potatoes and beets. Rounding off the meal was a tall glass of milk, a fine addition to the balance of the meal, and the perfect drink to drown your school-time sorrows in.  
  
         Uncle Noah took a large swig from his glass, as if it was filled with bourbon instead of milk. "Maybe you're just shooting too high with this assignment," he offered up, wiping a milk mustache from his already impressive facial hair. "Starlight City wasn't built in a day, Andy."  
  
         "But the poor boy was so close last time," Mary persisted, furrowing her brow and shaking her head. "I'm sure with effort, Andy will be able to get out how he really feels." Like Justin and Slick, the family was well aware of Andy's feelings toward Maru Mari. Unlike with the two boys, however, he had seen fit to tell them up front, while Justin and Slick had to deduce it by themselves. Andy figured they were close-knit in that regard, even if unorthodox.  
  
         Andy sighed into the napkin on his lap, his head lowered in frustration. "It's not just that stuff with Tarah," he explained, making a small swirl in his mashed potatoes with his fork. "I choked two more times after that when I tried again. It's like something is telling me that I'm not supposed to exercise my free-will, that I'm just supposed to leave things be."  
  
         "Yet there are alternatives to free-will," a gravely voice spoke up from the other side of the table. Andy looked up in curiosity to find Grandpa Moses staring at him pointedly from his half- eaten meal. "What do you mean, Grandpa?" the boy asked.  
  
         "Dad, don't confuse him now," Noah chided, a hint of respectful warning to his voice.  
  
         "You have to do the assignment your teacher has given you, but he can't force a conclusion on," the old man continued, ignoring his son's protests. "For instance, you might simply explain that, according to the analysis of your actions, you do not believe in free-will."  
  
         "But that's not going to empower Andy!" Mary jumped in, looking up from her Salisbury steak. "We want him to believe he's strong enough to make his own choices."  
  
         "Is there any reason to make him believe he's stronger than he really is?" Moses said, putting down his fork. "Stronger than Fate? There's too many people living in quiet desperation for that, and far too few heroes. No Andy," he then looked back towards the youngest member of the family. "Life's one track, and the best thing you can do for yourself is to accept it and try to enjoy the ride, for what it's worth."  
  
         "That doesn't make any sense," Noah insisted, putting another bite of steak to his mouth. "You're claiming there's hardly any heroes? I see them everyday."  
  
         "That's just their own path," Moses responded. "Those 'heroes' are simply on a track that leads to more productive behavior. It's nothing they're doing outside of Fate."  
  
         Noah shook his head and swallowed his mouthful. "Look, I'm still going to say that any old joe can forge themselves into a doer of great things," he said, stabbing his fork into his meat and folding his arms, as if he had just slain a great beast.  
  
         "I say Andy already has that power now," Mary threw in with a self-satisfied sort of huff.  
  
         Andy regarded this exchange with a passive eye, drinking in all the knowledge without feeling the need to add anything in. It was all too obvious to them; Grandpa, with his belief in Fate, and Aunt Mary, with her peppermint metaphors for free-will choices. He had tried to take the peppermint, but it had slipped from his grasp, and he been handed a mint jujube instead. A mint jujube that was Tarah Reichardt.  
  
    Yet he held onto the jujube, even though he should've tossed it to the wayside. Why had he done that? Now he had to deal with her on Wednesday, with no chance on avoiding her and that awkward feeling that followed wherever she went. What kind of path was he on?  
  
    He looked down at his half-eaten Salisbury steak, still speared on his fork. "A heroic path..." he contemplated to himself, eyes half-closed. "Am I a hero?"  
  
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Next Up- Different and Cool- Part 3 (Wednesday)


	3. Different and Cool (Wednesday)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Justin and Slick put their plan into action; Tarah goes to Andy's house.

         Outside Starlight Jr. High, there was a lot of activity going on next to the new gymnasium. All over the sports field and black top, students were not only playing soccer and basketball, but various hodgepodge games combined from all those sports. This was partly due to Mr. Clark's assignment, which was encouraging many to stand up and create their own variant on their favorite games. It was encouraging creativity, and it seemed to be a good thing.  
  
         Inside Starlight Jr. High was another story.  
  
         "No one's gonna even see us comin'," a muffled voice whispered through the hallway, snickering with uncontrollable mirth. "Man, this is gonna be so sweet."  
  
         "Shut up," a second voice hissed back. "Your voice carries."  
  
         Justin and Slick had managed to give the P.E. teacher the slip, and had entered the gymnasium unannounced without anyone missing them. Keeping away from the boys' basketball practice on the court, they slipped and skulked through the small hallways of the complex, adopting the air of ninja assassins. Soon, they had arrived at the girls' locker room, a relatively new addition built to accommodate their own basketball team. And the place where actual girls were going to be showering off very soon.  
  
         Moving as a pair, the two slipped next to the locker room door and put their ears to it. Upon hearing female voices, they moved a step back from the door, and leaned up against the wall. "Think this is gonna work, dude?" Slick said, folding his arms and peering at the boy through the part in his hair.  
  
         "We took care of everything beforehand, remember?" Justin admonished his friend. "All we have to do now is wait."  
  
         Thanks to the donations Justin's father had made to the school, the duo had been granted after-hours access to the school last night on the flimsy premise of grabbing some schoolbooks they had left behind. With a little elbow grease and a pilfered diagram of the school's safety systems, they had rigged one of the shower knobs to instead trigger the sprinkler system in the locker room. Another hour's work resulted in the hot water heater supplying heat to the sprinkler system. It was the longest, and most ambitious project the boys had ever undertaken.  
  
         And when that fateful girl turned on that knob...  
  
         "All wet, all hot!" Slick practically sang, meshing himself against the wall like a streamer of slime dripping down. He sighed, ready for all those lovely beauties to pour from the locker room, soaked shirts and screaming their lungs out. "Think they'll be wearing something other than sports bras?" he suggested.  
  
         "Could be." Justin smiled to himself, already starting to fantasize. "I know those two exchange students haven't gotten theirs in yet."  
  
         "Oooh, yeah!" The blond boy cheered, pumping his fist in premature victory. "Lacy, white goodness!"  
  
         "Yup." Justin smiled again, letting the peak on one canine tooth slip beyond his lip.  
  
         The two made themselves a bit more comfortable on the wall, arcing their backs so that the painted brick didn't dig into their skin. "I can't wait to see all those wet, slippery girls," Slick moaned. "Mari..."  
  
         "Janey..." Justin joined in lustily, a bit more husky than his friend.  
  
         "Carol..." Slick continued, a rivulet of drool falling off his lip. Then, a strange twitch formed in his cheek. "Hey, isn't Tarah going to be there, too?" he asked, raising his one visible eyebrow.  
  
         After letting the image slip into their heads, the two turned to each other and made a face. "Eeewww!!!"  
  
         Once they had gotten their mutual disgust out of their systems, the two boys resumed waiting for their plan to come to fruition. Nervous and anticipant, they began to grow impatient as well, tapping their fingers against their arms in repetitive motion. The hubbub of the basketball team became like white noise in a psychologist's office; subtle yet droning. The wall felt hard against their backs, grating against their spines hard enough to make them wonder if some permanent back injury was in the offing.  
  
         It was Slick who first broke the silence. "Uh, isn't this taking too long?" he said, gritting his teeth and quickly looking back to the locker room door.  
  
         Justin remained focused on the door for a little longer, before turning to Slick. "Yeah, a little bit," he responded, his face starting to lose the patience it held before.  
  
         They both stood waiting a moment more with twin expressions of screwed malcontent. A sterile silence took over the hall, cold and frosty like a hospital waiting room.  
  
         "Ya know," Slick started, a disappointed scowl coming to his face. "I bet they're not even in there at all."  
  
         "They couldn't have left, dolt," Justin snapped, antsy with the impending failure. "We were at the door the entire time." He put his ear up to the wall once again, and Slick followed suit. The voices from the girl's locker room had now been replaced by a biting, vacant hiss, as if it were empty the whole while.  
  
         Slick pulled away from the wall. "Let's go in," he whispered, stretching his hand towards the handle of the door. "I gotta see this for myself."  
  
         "Idiot, wait!" Justin hissed out, snatching at the boy's shirt. "You'll get us caught!" But Slick moved forward as if he hadn't heard him, and pulled open the door to the girl's shower room. He slipped inside the crack of the door, as a cool wave of sanitized air made its way out. Left with little else to do, Justin went in after his friend, gritting his teeth with irritance.  
  
         The two boys steadily made their way across the cold, tiled floor, peering about the eerily empty bath hall. Their silent footfalls were the only sounds in the shower room; not even a drip of water could be heard toppling onto the sinks and shower floors. It was like nobody had stepped in for years, save Justin and Slick.  
  
         Slick quickly glanced back and forth, a low growl coming from his lip. Then, he pounded his fist against the wall in disgust. "This is bogus," he complained, snorting derisively into the cold, shower room air. "There ain't any more hot babes here than at a sci-fi dork convention!"  
  
         "I don't get it." Justin seemed to be talking to himself rather than his friend. "The girls are supposed to enter the shower room at 11:30 sharp."  
  
         "But if we're going to wrangle a couple of pervs, we come in later," a third voice suddenly broke out from the silence, light and airy even in the echo of the acoustics-driving room.  
  
         "...huh?" Slick suddenly squeaked out. A sweatdrop rolled down his chilled temple, the cold caress of dread taking its bony hand unto his heart.  
  
         The voice seemed to smile in the darkness. "Get 'em!"  
  
         From beyond the corners and in the stalls, a dozen teenaged girls suddenly poured onto the duo, their intent anything but friendly. They slammed into Justin and Slick and separated them, pushing them to opposite corners of the room. Six girls detained Justin by forcing his arms up against the wall, and another six did the same for Slick. In about seven seconds, the boys were completely unable to move, pinned like crucifix victims from the dark ages of the world.  
  
         Justin valiantly struggled against the bonds of feminine flesh, succeeding only in hurting his wrists. "What...the heck...!?" he growled out, looking back and forth between the pretty, yet devilish-looking faces.  
  
         Slick offered less resistance than his friend, glancing at the girls with a weak smile pasted on his face. "Y'know, this might qualify as one of my fantasies if I didn't think I was about to die," he said, a nervous chuckle escaping his nonchalant facade.  
  
         "Well, you're not going to die." The same light voice spoke out from the other side of the room. "Just a little chill."  
  
         Justin and Slick both looked up from their bound positions to see the thirteenth girl exit one of the shower stalls, taking easy steps despite all the tension. Her long, green hair was clinging to her shoulders in large swaths. "Maru Mari?" Justin said, his eyebrow cocking upwards. "This was you?"  
  
         Mari smiled, oddly pleasant despite her dark aura. "One of the girls from your 5th Period class yesterday heard your plan," she explained, folding her arms. "Amy just wanted to tell the teacher, but I thought this would be much more fun." The devil-may-care grin on her face seemed to imply that she really thought it so; it wasn't just veiled anger.  
  
         "Uh..." Slick piped up semi-shyly, grinning a doomed man's grin. "What's 'this?'"  
  
         "This this," Mari replied. Then, she turned to the shower room door. "Bring it, Fiona!" she called out, putting a cupped hand to her mouth.  
  
         "Right, Captain!" A voice responded, sounding a bit faint.  
  
         Justin and Slick's eyes followed the wave of sound to the door, which was beginning to pull open. Soon, a brown-haired girl came forth from outside the shower room, holding a long garden hose. Their hearts were filled with dread as they saw their plan being turned against them, with Fiona handing the hose to Mari as if it were an executioner's axe. "Like see-through shirts and peep shows, do you?" Mari said with a wide smile. "I think you kids are wet behind the ears!"  
  
         "She's evil," Justin pondered to himself, staring transfixed at the gleaming hose nozzle.  
  
         "She's crazy!" Slick added, also making no bid for freedom.  
  
         "No, no." An unearthly spark was alight in Mari's eye as she gripped the hose like a blunderbuss. "She's gonna have loads of fun!"  
  
         All the girls save the green-haired one had backed away from the duo, leaving Justin and Slick's hands firmly bound with twine connected to wall hangers. A good thing for the girls, since a large bulge was already starting to force its way through the length of the hose. Justin grit his teeth in anticipation of the frigid blast, following the bulge like a blood clot to his heart. Slick was practically hyperventilating, stretching his hands against the twine hard enough to carve notches into his wrists.  
  
         "Hope you brought a change of clothes," Mari crooned, bringing the hose up to bear as the pressure reached the nozzle.  
  
         "Not my beautiful hair!" Slick whined one last time, cringing.  
  
         And then a bolt of ice-cold water exploded from the nozzle, jetting out like a geyser. "AhhhHHHH...!" Justin and Slick screamed as they met the leviathan torrent, their calls echoing harmlessly inside the walls of the girls' shower room.  
  
-  
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*****  
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         "I don't know if I can really do this," Andy said slightly to himself, cringing away from the door like a monster was behind it.  
  
         "You already made the appointment with her," Mary reminded him, gently pushing the boy towards the door. "You've got to fulfill it."  
  
         Sweat was forming on his forehead, and goose bumps covered his arms from the shoulders down. "Maybe you guys can just say I'm not feeling well or something," he tried hopefully, turning to his aunt and uncle with a slightly abashed smile on his face.  
  
         The doorbell rang a second time, jarring Andy's nerves like plucked piano wires.  
  
         "We're not going to make excuses for you, Andy," Noah said adamantly, folding his brawny arms. "Now get going and let that girl in!"  
  
         Andy sighed, defeated. He turned away from his unhelpful family and proceeded towards the door, putting his hand on the knob. He had already looked through the peephole when the doorbell first rang, so there was no point in delaying the inevitable. He turned the knob and wrenched the door open, trying to stomach his nervousness so that he wouldn't offend his guest.  
  
         From the other side of the door, Tarah's smile greeted him like an insurance agent on a holiday: unwelcome yet irrefutable. "Hi, Andrew!" she said, her face increasingly gleeful every moment. "Did I arrive on time?"  
  
         "Y-yeah, right on time..." Andy responded, remembering himself just in time for politeness. He took in her appearance: a green tank top with a pair of cargo shorts smeared with grass stains. In her arms were a collection of bug jars containing a wide variety of bouncing insects. All in all, she looked like she stepped out of a public television nature show.  
  
         Time for contemplating this was minimal, as the girl was making her way through the door. Andy stepped aside to make room for her and, just like that, Terrible Tarah was in the house, as if she was a family friend stopping for a visit.  
  
         It was weird.  
  
         "I was catching bugs in the evening," Tarah told him, handing over a jar. "I wanted to show them to you when I came over, since we're gonna have lots of time together!"  
  
         "Er herm..." Andy responded laconically, taking the jar and looking at it with wide eyes. Most of the things inside had frightened him as a young child, and still gave him quivers today.  
  
         "All the interesting bugs come out when it's late, so I tried to catch them real quick," Tarah added, nodding her head as if in affirmation. She resumed taking in her surrounding, looking around the room like a curious monkey. Soon, she turned towards Mary and Noah, who were waiting at the entrance to the den. "Are those your parents?" she asked, pointing a finger out at them.  
  
         "Um, yeah, kinda." Andy snapped back to attention, putting the jar under his arm. "This is my Aunt Mary and Uncle Noah. I'm...staying with them now," he said, gesturing towards the two.  
  
         "It's very nice to meet you, Tarah." Mary took the initiative for pleasantries with a gentle smile.  
  
         "Uh huh." Tarah nodded enthusiastically, walking up to them and extending her hand. "Me too!"  
  
         While the girl was busy shaking their hands like some sort of room worker, Andy took a moment to get used to the idea of the school nerd in his house. Nothing's gonna happen, he told himself, idly rocking back and forth. Everything's fine.  
  
         Repeating the mantra in his head, he meandered on over to the cheerful trio, where Tarah was shaking Noah's hand. "So...you wanna start working now?" he asked, trying not to lay too much eye contact on her.  
  
         "Sure," she said, walking over to him with an eager smile and staring him in the face. The pigtailed girl quickly brought another one of the glass jars up to bear. "I think we could study these neat bugs," she said, holding it up for him to inspect. "See if they act on free-will."  
  
         Andy almost had to suppress a laugh. It was clear where Tarah's brain currently was: right in the middle of that same public television nature show. "I...don't think that's what Mr. Clark had in mind," he said lightly, pushing the jar away.  
  
         "Are you sure?" Tarah asked, thrusting the jar to his nose again. "They're really cool."  
  
         Before Andy could debate on what was to be considered "cool," she was already going into specifics. "See this big one?" she bubbled, pointing out a rather grody looking creature. "It only comes out at night, when it's time to eat mealybugs, but those are in another jar. And this one, it dies just after it reproduces. That's a hard life!"  
  
         The boy quietly tolerated the diatribe as Tarah continued to babble away. Another thing was happening too: every time she span the jar to draw attention to another bug, she was unconsciously unscrewing the cap that kept them all safely trapped inside.  
  
         "And here's a little tick I found in the yard," she added in, pointing to the little green one hovering around at the top of the jar. "They burrow under your skin real good."  
  
         "There are ticks in the yard?" Mary piped up, an extremely anxious expression coming to her face. "And now one's in the house?"  
  
         "Don't worry." She smiled cheerfully. "It's safe inside the glass...oh, there it goes!" she suddenly cried out, her eyes widening slightly as a small speck darted out from the half-opened jar and started springing all over the place.  
  
         "ACK!" Mary suddenly shrilled, jumping about a foot in the air. "KillitkllitKILL IT!"  
  
         "I got this one," Noah said in a manly sort of voice, clenching his fists as if to smash the creature into dust.  
  
         "Wait, it's a living creature!" Tarah hollered out, waving her arms around in a panic. "It's name is Sir Digory!"  
  
         "It's name is Devil Spawn," the man insisted, moving over to the tick’s current position and throwing punches at it. “And it's time to exorcise!”  
  
         Andy put his hand on his head in quiet disbelief. "Is this Murphy's Law?" he supposed for a moment, as the chaos around him continued to swell and boil.  
  
-  
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*****  
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         Time passed and floodwaters subsided. Andy was now up in his room with Tarah, figuring they'd get their work done better in solitude. The room wasn't exceptionally large, but it was enough for two people to work in it comfortably. With the door closed, it made for a cozy little hovel for the two teens to curl themselves up in. So cozy that Andy was glad that his friends weren't witnessing how close the two of them were tonight.  
  
         Placing her hand on the electric globe, Tarah marveled how the lightning streams flew to her fingertips. "This is neato!" she cheered, rapping her fingertips against the glass. "High voltage discharges!"  
  
         "Uh, right," Andy responded, trying his best to humor her. "I got that at a science exhibit two years back."  
  
         "That was the Neo Aviania exhibit, right?" she queried, straightening her glasses on the bridge of her nose. "I liked that."  
  
         "Yeah, it was pretty cool." Andy smiled, genuine humor in his voice now.  
  
         Tarah smiled back and proceeded to the bed Andy was lying on, carrying her lukewarm linguini with her. Against Mary's judgment, they had opted to bring their meals upstairs, so they could work while they ate. She placed her food on a small end table, and sat down on the bed next to him. "Now what?" she asked, looking down at the boy's flash of sea-green hair.  
  
         Andy brought his pen to his lip, studying the blank page before him. "I guess we start on this free-will thing," he started up, glancing towards the girl from the corner of his eye. "Do you have anything on this, because I'm drawing a blank."  
  
         Her response to this question was brief. "No, I can't write very well."  
  
         The boy jerked at this, and raised himself on his elbows. "But you're supposed to be smart," he protested. "I mean, don't you get good grades in everything?"  
  
         "Oh, I only get Cs in humanities," Tarah explained, shaking her head. "I thought everybody knew that."  
  
         "Huh, and I thought you were supposed to help me," he groused somewhat bitterly. He sighed and looked down at his hands. "I've been swinging and missing all week with this assignment."  
  
         The girl seemed to come to a revelation. "Did you want to talk to Maru Mari yesterday?" she asked, looking at him apologetically. "I'm sorry if I messed it up."  
  
         Andy looked at Tarah in surprise, wondering how she had made the connection. But he soon shook it off with a slight chuckle. "That's okay," he told her, offering her a brief smile. "I think Mr. Clark's going to give me a 'D' no matter what, anyhow."  
  
         "The professor won't get mad if you just turn in what you did, you know," she pointed out. "He's really nice when he's had his coffee, when it's not decaffeinated."  
  
         "I...don't want to just blow it off," he admitted, shaking his head in disdain. "I want to get somewhere in this assignment. It's confusing me, and I want to conquer it."  
  
         At that, a cheerful smile warmed Tarah's lips. "That's neat," she said, cocking her head slightly to the side. "It's just like when I'm trying to track the migration patterns of the junebugs."  
  
         Andy turned towards the braided girl, a strange expression on his face. With Tarah's bright demeanor imploring him, he stared straight through her spectacles, and got what was perhaps his first good look at her eyes. They were a calming, pure blue, and Andy could see himself reflected inside, his image framed perfectly within her irises. They showed no pretense or conceit and simply illuminated her regard for him.  
  
         Their eyes remained locked for a moment more before Andy suddenly broke the contact with a quick jerk of his head. "So...uh, what do you want to get out of this assignment?" he asked her, scratching his skull and trying to get rid of that strange feeling. “You know…free-will and all that.”  
  
         "Oh, I don't believe in free-will," Tarah responded offhandedly.  
  
         Andy reared up slightly at this unexpected answer. "You...don't?" he pressed, a bit jarred by Tarah's cavalier attitude towards what he felt was heavy subject matter.  
  
         "Yeah, it's a combination of outward stimuli and the inward reaction to it," she explained, flopping down lightly on the bed. "When we study the bugs, we can see that life is cause and effect. We're not any different from bugs, because we all play off each other in patterns." Tarah stared into the whirling fan above, the blades seeming to churn her eyes as they struggled to keep up with them. "It's not like you have to blame organisms for what they do. Life's still real interesting, even if your favorite bug gets eaten sometimes."  
  
         Andy gaped at the girl as if she had suddenly switched languages. The words she spoke seemed as random and incomprehensible at the rest of her, yet it was clear that there was something more behind them. Where was all this coming from? And why was it bothering him so much?  
  
         It was becoming clear that this assignment was going to take him to some strange places within his mind.  
  
         The boy was so deep in thought that he scarcely heard Tarah when she had gotten off his bed. Still, Andy looked up when he saw her staring down at him. "Andrew, can we rest for a little while?" she asked. "I'm feeling tired."  
  
         "Um, alright," Andy consented, looking at her cautiously.  
  
         She nodded her thanks, and set about wandering the room, absently picking at the various knickknacks again. A moment of silence passed between the two, during which Andy was thinking very hard about voicing the errant thought that had just come to his head. With a maudlin mood weighing him down, he reached his decision fairly easily. "Why don't we do something fun for a little while?" he asked her, bolting off the bed.  
  
         Tarah turned slowly towards him, a surprised look on her face. "O-okay!" she finally responded, her excited smile flying out at him.  
  
         Andy smiled in turn, a slightly abashed look on his face. "That's good," he responded, putting a hand on the back of his head and running it through his hair.  
  
         Another brief moment of silence. "So what do you want to do?" she asked eagerly, moving a bit closer to Andy.  
  
         He gulped slightly at her close proximity, and looked away. "Well, we have something in the living room that’s kinda fun, if a bit weird," Andy said, his hand still within his hair.  
  
         She blinked a few times. "A videogame?" she asked.  
  
         At this, the boy peeked back at her with a small, almost mischievous smile. "It's a little more weird than that..."  
  
-  
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*****  
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         The karaoke machine's loud reverberation rocked the small living room like a car on hydraulics. Its pulsating rhythm sought to control the audience's heartbeat, pushing them into the proper mood: unabashed enthusiasm.  
  
         "I still can't believe you purchased that infernal device." Uncle Noah was grumbling to Mary, his hands practically crumpling the newspaper he held in front of him. "It's caused us nothing but pain."  
  
         "Hush," the woman admonished him, taking short sips of her Puar tea. "It was Andy's 11th birthday present, and he's gotten so much enjoyment from it." She put down her cup, and folded her arms in defiance. If one were to look close, though, they could see small streak marks where she had gripped the cup too tightly.  
  
         The two adults, stress wrinkles in their eyes, did their best to endure the mind-numbing song from the high-tech device. Not to mention its overenthusiastic singer.  
  
         "WIDE WIDE WORLD, LET ME TAKE YOUR HEART!" Tarah squealed into the microphone, holding it close to her warbling mouth. "ONLY YOU CAN SOOTHE MY SOULLLLL!"  
  
         Andy sat on the sofa between his aunt and uncle and stared transfixed at the bespectacled girl, who had transformed from a school oddball into some sort of karaoke demon. Politely, he refrained from covering his ears from the high-pitched siren that made death by shipwreck seem more appealing. Instead, he regarded her with curiosity, strangely entranced by her. She's really getting into it!  
  
         The song mercifully ended a second or two before the Champion family's eardrums burst. Setting the microphone on top of the machine, Tarah skipped back towards the sofa with a spring in her step. "Was that good, Andrew?" Tarah asked eagerly, smiling widely at the boy before her.  
  
         "Uh...it was nice," he lied, conjuring up a false smile for the girl's benefit. "Very...enthusiastic."  
  
         She showed no acknowledgment of his duplicity. "Thanks!" she said, twirling her right braid with her finger.  
  
         Andy grinned in return, his pleasant mask suddenly becoming his real face. For some reason, the situation was simply too feel-good to even worry about the condition of your ears.  
  
         Taking a large breath and wiping her forehead, Tarah moved aside, leaving a clear path to the karaoke machine. "It's your turn!" she said cheerily, making a motion towards it.  
  
         Andy nodded briefly, then left the sofa to proceed towards the bulky device. Picking up the microphone from where the girl had left it, he tapped his finger against the head a couple of times, and was rewarded with a few straggled clucks. A somewhat silly expression overtook the facial features of Andrew Champion, and he turned towards his audience with a faux-debonair look on his face. "Ladies and gentleman, we are now taking requests," he crooned into the microphone. "Andrew Champion will make all your dreams come true."  
  
         "I like ‘Talk to Her Heart!’" Tarah called loudly, though they were only a few feet apart.  
  
         Andy cocked an eyebrow at the suggestion, though it did not completely squelch his zeal. 'Talk to Her Heart' was a song performed by the bubblegum band Toxic Crayon that was popular enough when he was seven, but relatively reviled now. "Are you sure?" he asked her, cradling the mike lightly in his grip. "It's pretty old."  
  
         "Uh huh!" she said eagerly, pumping her fists. "I can even dance to it!"  
  
         Well, if she was willing to dance to it, he was willing to sing it. Committed to his decision, he plugged the appropriate code into the machine, while Tarah moved to the front of the room beside him. During the brief time before the song started up, the boy and girl took the time to rearrange some of the furniture so that Tarah would have room to dance. Soon, everything was prepared, and the song was about to start.  
  
         The music began with the bumping bop of drum machines, followed by a flurry of computerized brass hits. The pigtailed girl began bouncing back and forth to the beats, her pigtails like pendulums in grandfather clocks. A bead of sweat rolled down Andy's temple, as he fought to maintain a halfway calm expression. At least a guy could sing this one without feeling like a total boyband wannabee, unlike some other Toxic Crayon hits.  
  
         As he started singing, Tarah began swinging back and forth, making small circular motions with her arms and hands. Her eyes were half closed, and there was a ghost of a smile on her face. She performed a twirl that sent her braids flying like propeller blades, which caused the boy to blink as the hair got a little too close to his eye. But Andy nevertheless kept his eye on the girl's form, rocking and rolling with the best of them.  
  
         She danced a lot better than she sang. And she was nicer than he would've ever imagined.  
  
         "Three-fourths time, Andrew, and synchronized vocals!" the girl bubbled, twirling about in a flurry of pigtails. "It's a real neat beat!"  
  
         "Got it, Taraaah!" Andy sang out, still in tune with the melody.  
  
         The music continued onward, and the song got no better because of it. Yet Andy's mood had improved so much that he could now sing the song with a straight face. Tarah finished an impressive spin and took a brief look at the boy, smiling brightly for him. And he just smiled back, with thoughts of the project, his friends, and even Maru Mari floating away like a note just played...  
  
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*****  
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         "I didn't know you were such a good dancer," Andy said, taking a small sip from his juice box.  
  
         "My mom made me take dancing classes," Tarah said, a blush of pride radiating from her cheeks. "You're real good at singing," she added, spreading the warm feeling around like strawberry jam.  
  
         "I kinda have a lot of practice..." he said, smiling in spite of himself.  
  
         The two fell into a comfortable silence, sipping from their juice boxes. They were sitting up in a dilapidated tree fort in the middle of the backyard. Tarah had complained at first, claiming that the nails and extra weight hurt the oak tree it was built in. Still, he had managed to persuade her to come up, saying that the time outside would be relaxing after blasting their ears out indoors.  
  
         With his feet dangling over the side of the tree house, Andy looked over to where the girl was sitting, and then chuckled slightly. Tarah's attention had fallen back to the small caterpillar on the window; she had told him earlier it was a rare specimen. When she caught his eye, she simply smiled up at him, unabashed by his staring. And the boy just smiled back.  
  
         "It's going to pupate in about two days, you see," she informed him with a smile, pointing at the inching insectoid. "Then it'll be able to fly around the flowers, with bright blue wings. But I think it's great now, too."  
  
         "Just from watching it go up the wall, huh?" Andy peered at her though the corner of his eye. Maybe he was feeling a bit lightheaded tonight, but he thought he had actually understood that.  
  
         Tarah just smiled and nodded. "Oh, it's really neat!" she cheered. "It's always trying to get ready for the next stage of development. Even if you can't fly, you can always run!"  
  
         He grinned, ignoring the impulse to brush off the odd metaphor. The caterpillar really was wobbling forth with all its might, just to reach a leaf that snuck in through the cracks in the tree house boards.  
  
         "I think you're like a caterpillar too, Andrew!" Tarah added, taking a moment to straighten her glasses.  
  
         "Think so?" Andy turned to her. wondering where she was taking this.  
  
         "Yeah, you're full of a lot of good stuff that's gonna make you something great," she responded. "Plus, you're green."  
  
         He didn't know exactly what he was laughing at, but he let loose all the same. "Can't forget that!" he chuckled, running a hand through his green locks.  
  
         Suddenly, Tarah straightened up. "My mom's probably coming soon," she said, a slight trace of disappointment in her voice. "I need to get ready to go."  
  
         Andy nodded, smiling serenely. "We didn't get a lotta work done, did we?" he said, with laughter still in his voice.  
  
         The girl giggled in response to this. "So, are your mom and dad coming home?" she asked, turning her head to face him directly. "Maybe I can convince Mom to let me stay a little longer, so I can meet them too!"  
  
         And then Andy's face darkened just a little bit, and he stared straight up at the roof of the tree fort. "They're not coming home," he said softly, his voice deceptively neutral. "They died...car accident."  
  
         "Oh..." Tarah squeaked out, her eyes widening for a second. "...I'm sorry."  
  
         Andy turned to the girl with a strained grin. "It's alright," he said, trying to wave off her concern. "It happened a long time ago."  
  
         Tarah stared down at her feet intently. "But your aunt and uncle seem pretty nice, right?" she attempted, her brow scrunching up.  
  
         "Yeah..." he responded, nodding his head. The boy looked back towards the roof again and began to slowly lean back onto the floor. "Aunt Mary and Uncle Noah were living in a small house before the accident," he continued, drawing strength from Tarah's goodwill. "A week later, they moved into our old house so that I could stay at home. After a little while, Grandpa Moses came in too from his apartment, so I'm never really alone. The guys've been real great to me for these past four years."  
  
         "I know they're really great, too!" Tarah agreed, smiling for him. "Even if they don't like bugs!"  
  
         "Yeah," he replied, stiffing a laugh under his hand. "It's just..." An unreadable expression overtook Andy's face, and he sat up again to peer at Tarah. "I was always real close to my mother. You know, talking to her about everything, things like that."  
  
         He stared off into the distant trees beyond the backyard fence, watching them sway with the slight breeze. "Mom and I used to go on our own adventures together, and I felt a lot more...brave I guess, when she was still here. You'd probably like her; she was like some kind of warrior-princess. And sometimes. I can hear her voice late at night, telling me to keep moving forward. So whenever I'm in trouble, I try and think about what she might tell me."  
  
         The boy suddenly felt a light, moist sensation on his cheek, the telltale twitter of bangs against his face. Reacting strongly to the kiss, he quickly whirled back towards its source, a look of amazement on his face. Tarah was radiant, with a small blush tinging her cheeks, yet still smiling. Her eyes twinkled lightly within their glass containment, which seemed to reflect his own shocked expression almost perfectly.  
  
         The two continued to stare at each other.  
  
         "Tarah, your mother is here." ...and a projected voice burst out from the back porch, all but destroying the mood which had accumulated in the tree fort.  
  
         "W-wha...?" the girl burbled out, her eyes widening as if she had seen a ghost. Jerking back and forth in a panic, Tarah eventually lost her place on the wooden floor, and began to slip off and out of the tree. "Whoooaaa!" she cried, flailing her arms as she fell. Only Andy's quick hand and thinking saved her from a bumpy rendezvous with the cold, hard ground.  
  
         Dangling by the arm, Tarah looked upwards at the boy, who was straining heavily to hold her light, but still considerable human weight. She smiled a goofy sort of smile. "Whoops!" she chirped, sticking out her tongue. "That's a drop!"  
  
         Andy grunted a bit, putting another arm to use in keeping her up. "Yeah," he responded, a strained smile coming to his face.  
  
         Scooting forward slightly, the boy carefully lowered Tarah onto the ground. Once accomplished, he backed up a bit and stared down at the girl, a curiously hollow expression on his face. They looked at each other a moment more, feeling more and more awkward.  
  
         "Well, uh, I'm going back home," she said, glancing to the side for a brief moment before turning her eyes to Andy once again.  
  
         "Um...yeah," he managed, blinking a few times.  
  
         They both hesitated a moment, struggling to find something to say. "Hey, I bet I'll see you in school tomorrow!" Tarah bubbled, a small flash of excitement in her eyes.  
  
         "O-okay," Andy replied somewhat laconically, staring wide-eyed at her.  
  
         The girl stood silent for a moment more, still locked in some sort of strange staring match with him. Then, she slowly turned into a jog towards the house, where Aunt Mary was holding a door open for her. Clearing the lawn in a scant few seconds, she arrived at the porch and entered the door. And then, with her fingers gripping the door frame, Tarah spared a smile and a wave for the boy as she disappeared into the house, towards her ride home and normal life.  
  
         Andy sat silently for about half a minute after the back door swung shut, like a statue of cold stone. Then, he flopped onto his back, the sharp hardness of the wood feeling somewhat refreshing. His eyes were unfocused, seeming to stare off into another world. Maybe he had been in another world, a moment ago.  
  
         He slowly placed his hand against his cheek where Tarah's lips had grazed it. "What...just happened?" he wondered to himself, his voice wavering slightly in the brisk breeze.  
  
         Only the crickets answered.  
  
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Next Up- Different and Cool- Part 4 (Thursday)


	4. Different and Cool (Thursday)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andy is forced to make a decision, and deals with the fallout.

         The sports field was filled with a variety of athletic accomplishment and daring dexterity, courtesy of the many fine athletes. The cheerleaders, too, had arrived, doing some rather impressive flips and spins in their routines. A few of the boys had appeared from out of the woodwork to peek at said cheerleaders, thinking their spot under the bleachers somehow made them invisible.  
  
         Two boys weren't feeling up to the danger.  
  
         "Detention..." Justin growled, leaning his back on the fence.  
  
         "For two weeks," Slick finished up, making a whistling sound.  
  
         They both sighed into the breezy air, as if older than their young age.  
  
         Their stunt on Wednesday had not gone unnoticed by the faculty. The girls had immediately told the gym teacher about the plot, conveniently leaving out the part about their watery revenge. The teacher was suitably ticked, and had sent them up to the principal's office on the spot. The principal, too, was peeved, and thus the long-term punishment.  
  
         "Free-will..." Justin began, putting his hand on his cheek.  
  
         "...Is not what it used to be." Slick completed the sentence, shaking his head in mock-disappointment.  
  
         "Well, at least you have something to write about," Andy joined in, sipping a cola. "I'm still only halfway done with mine."  
  
         "Because you couldn't talk to Mari," Justin said, a note of disgust creeping into his voice.  
  
         Andy's face fell. "I wish you wouldn't bring that up," he complained, putting one of his hands into his pocket. "It's not like I didn't try."  
  
         Slick tsked, his face a mockery of disapproval. "Andy, Andy, Andy," he taunted, waving his finger back and forth. "Can't you try not bein' a wuss, just for fun?"  
  
         "Heh, Andy not being a wuss is like Tarah not being a dork." Justin sneered, his mouth becoming sharp and craggy. "Totally impossible."  
  
         The two laughed uproariously, their earlier fatigue vanishing away. Andy groaned unhappily at another laugh at his expense. It seems that whenever he had a pleasant experience, it was balanced with more problems. He was beginning to feel like some lovable loser from a comic strip.  
  
         And something about the way they mentioned Tarah triggered a vibe within him. He didn't know why.  
  
         Eventually, the mirth died down, and the threesome resumed lazing about on the fence. Justin quickly turned to Slick with a 'gimme' expression. "Limestone, you got any smokes?" he asked, holding out his hand.  
  
         "Just a sec," Slick said, rummaging through his backpack for said item. A moment later, he came up with two packs of Morvarian Unfiltered. "Got them from my cousin in Morvaria City," he added, handing one of them to his silver-haired friend.  
  
         "Looks like there's some girl's phone number on the back." Justin squinted at the writing on the cigarette pack. "Family trait, Limestone?"  
  
         "You can't smoke those here, you know," Andy piped up, a flash of goody-goodyness rising within him.  
  
         "No one's gonna notice us, Champion," Justin argued, reaching into his jacket pocket for a lighter. "The track supervisor's an idiot."  
  
         Seemingly determined to ignore any more criticisms, he turned away from Andy to tend to his tobacco. In a second, he had the smoke lit, ready, and placed between his lips. But before he could take his first puff, Slick interrupted him with an urgent notice. "Yo, someone's comin'. Douse it!"  
  
         "Andrew, Andrew!" a light voice called out continually from the black top, amplifying every second.  
  
         Justin looked back and forth, as if caught in the act. But soon, his face regained its original lame candor. "Feh, it's just Reichardt."  
  
         "R-reichardt?" Andy squeaked, shrinking into himself.  
  
         Sure enough, Tarah was bobbing towards them, her pigtails bouncing excitedly on the sides of her head. In her arms was a writing tablet and a pencil, looking like they were about to fly out of her hands at any moment. With a small skid, she arrived at the trio's little spot under the sun. Sweat was clinging to her glasses, and her face was red and beaming.  
  
         Andy's face was probably redder.  
  
         "Andrew, I just thought of a few new things for our free-will assignment!" the girl said enthusiastically, pumping her fists. "A test to see whether locusts or blister beetles are more proactive!"  
  
         "Buzz off, Reichardt," Justin hissed, bringing the cigarette back to his lips. "We're busy."  
  
         "But I need to hurry and get him before the bugs get their afternoon snack!" she babbled, almost bouncing up and down. She took a closer look at the cigarette. "Those things are bad for your health, you know," she commented, pointing it out.  
  
         "Thank you, Surgeon General Tarah," Slick sang out in a mock-announcer's voice. Justin chuckled a couple of times at this, accidentally hacking up some smoke in the process.  
  
         Tarah looked a little bothered, but quickly puffed back up. "I mean it!" she insisted. "Studies show that you can get lung cancer as early as thirty if you keep smoking." She turned back towards the green-haired boy. "Andrew, can we go?" she asked, her eyes imploring him behind the glasses.  
  
         "I...um..." Andy stammered at this request, completely panicking at what to do. Talking to Tarah in his own house was one thing; talking to her in front of his friends was something else. Sweatdrops rolled off his temple as he envisioned one embarrassing scenario after another. If Justin and Slick knew that she had kissed him back at the house...  
  
         In the end, it was all taken out of his hands. "Whatcha got there, Tarah?" Slick said slyly, creeping up aside the girl and reaching for her notepad.  
  
         "Hey, stop!" Tarah said, shrugging away from the boy and hugging the pad close to her chest. "It's private!"  
  
         "Private, huh?" The blond boy pondered, slowly easing away from the pigtailed girl. Then, with a flick of his hand, he reached out and plucked the pad from her. "Public property if I ever saw it!" he crowed, holding the object above his head and laughing insanely.  
  
         "Give it back!" she cried out desperately, trying to reach for it by standing on tiptoe.  
  
         Slick was a lanky young teen, so her attempts were to no avail; he just held it higher. Looking over to Justin, he started to wind back for a throw. "Go long, Justin!" he said, using his other arm to keep Tarah at bay.  
  
         He threw the notepad, a smooth toss that fell directly into Justin's waiting arms. Sparing not a moment, the other boy flipped through the tablet, until his narrow eyes widened with glee upon finding the latest entry. "Hey, listen to this," he snickered, his teeth glimmering in the early afternoon sun. "'Andrew's such a neato person. I hope that he likes me and my lizards.'"  
  
         "Oh, that's rich!" Slick hooted loudly. As Tarah dashed over to Justin, the notepad was thrown again, and the blond boy thumbed through the pages. "'I gave him a kiss that felt really nice?'" he read out loud in a shocked tone, looking like he had just seen brain surgery first-hand. "What did you do with that girl on Wednesday, Andy?"  
  
         "Stop it!" Tarah practically screamed, grabbing the sides of her head. Her face was flaming red, and a few tears were forming at the corner of her eyes.  
  
         Slick made a pouty face towards the girl, as if he were moved by her display of emotion. Then, he tossed the pad to the third person in his party. "Catch, Andy!" he called out, a lightning-bolt smile on his face.  
  
         Andy started a bit at this and, more by reflex than anything else, caught the pad in his forearms. Staring at it like it was a rune tablet, he was left at a loss for what do with it. Something rectified by the various voices calling out to him.  
  
         "C'mon, Champion, hurry up and toss it!"  
  
         "Andrew, please help me!"  
  
         "Read us another lovely entry, Andy-baby!"  
  
         Andy looked back and forth between the three teen faces; Justin's, teeth glistening like vampire fangs; Slick's, lucidity lost within rabid glee; Tarah's, a wad of teary confusion. His face erupted with a fresh wave of sweat, feeling more heat than even the hot sun could account for. The pad felt heavy in his hand, as did the responsibility he carried with it. So he did the first thing that came to mind:  
  
         He threw the pad.  
  
         And the game of keep away continued.  
  
-  
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*****  
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         Five minutes later, the sports field was a vacant wasteland of dirt, grass, and dust, looking like it had been abandoned for years. The equipment and balls had all been put away, and the athletes had gone inside to exercise their minds instead of their bodies. A wistful gust blew by, making a spectre-like howl through the soccer goal nets. Only a boy and girl remained to hear this howl, the latter hunched over a torn notepad, and the former standing over her like a silent witness.  
  
         "Tarah," Andy said quietly, moving closer towards the girl.  
  
         "Just go..." she whispered into the wind, closing tear-strained eyes heavily.  
  
         The boy moved a little bit closer.  
  
         "JUST GO!" Tarah screamed out, her fingers digging into the rough turf below her hands.  
  
         Andy stayed for a moment more, his face a mask of anguish and pain. Then, he took off for the school, leaving the pigtailed girl to tend to the broken spine of a book, as well as a broken heart.  
  
-  
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*****  
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         The winds had their way with the sturdy, hardwood trees, swaying their branches like they were only reeds. It roared and hurrahed through the leaves, sending many of them tearing off into the open air. The Champion residence whistled slightly with repeated gales, unable to completely resist Mother Nature's berating. It was a night of torment, a dawn of darkness that drove all to hide in their homes away from the bat-like flapping, desperately trying to compensate for their terror with hot cocoa and other warm treats.  
  
         Andy ignored the rattling of the windowpane beside him, though it sang like a wind chime. Rather, he barely heard it, so inwardly focused that he rejected anything outside of himself. His eyes were hardened almost into slits, twinkling with negative emotion. In his shaking hand was a chew-marked pencil; rather disgusting, since it was mechanical.  
  
         He had been sitting at the desk in his room for almost an hour now, long enough to grow slightly numb in his legs. But if you were to take a look at him, you could see that discomfort was the least of his worries. His back was hunched, like the long suffering writer trying to make good his or her latest story. Able to let the world go by without batting an eye, save to the misfortunes within their own heads.  
  
         After the incident, he saw no hint of Tarah Reichardt for the remainder of the day. Even when his eyes surreptitiously glanced over to the places she should've been, she wasn't there. Starlight Jr. High's energetic squabbling between classmates had become hollow and false to him. It was as if she had disappeared completely from his life, and had taken his life away with her.  
  
         Because...I threw her out of my life. With a shuddering breath, he put down his mangled pencil aside the lightning globe that still bore Tarah's fingerprints. Leaning back in his chair, he planted his feet on the ground to keep from falling over. With a hand on his forehead, and a troubled expression, he brooded over the past few days, a fourteen-year old boy in the guise of a philosopher.  
  
         He knew Tarah was the least-liked person in school, outside of any school bullies. Everyone hated her awkwardness, how she drowned in details and glowed for the insignificant. She could ramble on and on about the most trivial of subjects until you were ready to swat her like a gnat. Nothing more than a nuisance to be dealt with, and then forgotten as soon as possible.  
  
         All this, and she still didn't deserve the treatment he had given her. She had come to him seeking friendship, and he had thrown it back in her face with patented wishy-washy weakness. And wasn't it a far cry from his behavior yesterday? He might as well have told her he loved her up in that tree fort.  
  
         You sang with her, took her to your favorite place, and told her things you've never told anyone. Andy's eyes narrowed. ...what were you thinking? Of course she thought you were her friend.  
  
         But he hadn't been thinking. He had just taken her hand and run with her to the distant shores of imagination, regardless of reality. Walking straight through the yellow and black tape, ignoring the sounds of dangerous machinery. With those actions he had led her on. He had deceived her.  
  
         He had liked her.  
  
         No! His mind was screaming within the confines of his skull. She was supposed to be just the school geek! She's not a person, a friend, or any of that. She...she's...  
  
         He broke off from these painful thoughts with a gasp, desperately shaking his head free of the spiders that threatened to devour his mind. Slumping over on his desk, he struggled with his own consciousness, bearing it as a twenty-ton weight. His eye fell upon his half-completed report, mere scribbles on a page of notebook paper. With wide, fearful eyes, he began to read from it, and was promptly disgusted by the words that came from his own mind.  
  
         /In the end, I decided that there was no such thing as free-will. People are easily forced into action by things, and then forced again just as easily into a different action by other things. We fool ourselves that we have control in order to keep on living. But we are powerless to do anything outside of Fate./  
  
         With trembling hands, he held the paper in front of him, running over the lines again. His vision blurred further with each time he re-read them, and hatred grew. That's why he was now crumpling up the manuscript into a wad and tossing it to the side. That's why he was smacking his lightning globe off the desk and onto the floor, shattering into sparks, wires, and a million pieces of broken glass.  
  
         A moment later, quick footfalls were heard tromping up the stairs, as if in emergency. The door knob shook repeatedly, the person behind it obviously struggling with their own vigor. Swinging it open, Uncle Noah burst into the room, looking for all the world like a firefighter who had just axed his way in. "What the devil's going on here?" he demanded, probably more out of fear than anything else.  
  
         And all he saw was a boy with his head in his hands, shaking with insurmountable grief and looking like his best friend had just died.  
  
         "Andy, what are you doing?" Noah asked, his tone lightening up slightly. "Why is everything a mess?"  
  
         "Andy!" Mary cried, peeking in through the door frame and looking like she was near tears herself. "Oh, Andy!"  
  
         "G-grandpa...w-was right..." the boy stammered through his sobs, snorting loudly and wetly. "I...can't d-do anything...no such t-thing as free-will...I can't do ANYTHING!"  
  
         "Andy, what are you talking about?" Noah persisted, trying to bring him back on track. "You're not making sense."  
  
         "T-tarah's gone," Andy blubbered, his face hot with shame and defeat. "I g-got ridda her. Justin and Slick, they m-made me...didn't w-want to...I hate my friends!"  
  
         "That's enough, dear," Mary said sternly, placing a hand on her husband's shoulder. Scooting beside him, she made her way over to the boy's chair, where he was still hunched over the desk. Placing her arms around his shoulders, she leaned her head against his trembling back. "Hush now, sweety," she whispered into his ear. "Everything will be alright."  
  
         Andy didn't think he was in any state to believe her words. But slowly, his hand moved upwards to grip the woman's meaty arm, clutching it and bringing it closer to his chest like a good luck charm.  
  
         "You've really been struggling with this project, haven't you," she whispered, closing her eyes. "Perhaps you could use a break?"  
  
         He nodded weakly, his eyes still hot with salt water.  
  
         As the aunt and nephew sat in silence in the middle of the room, Noah stood stiffly in the doorway, watching them. He turned away and began walking to the window, looking out through the not-so-distant winds surrounding the house. The trees were still shaking with its fury, pleading for the rampage to stop. "Damn, but it's a rough night," he rumbled to the gusty night, his face screwing up into a stoic scowl.  
  
-  
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*****  
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         The karaoke bar maintained a lively atmosphere, even at such a late hour. All throughout the small establishment, people of all ages were jammed into the seats, staring at the spotlighted stage where a lone woman warbled Fred Sonata's "Send Me to the Sun" into the standup mike.  
  
         Andy and his family struggled to maneuver around the claustrophobic arrangement of chairs and booths, trying not to jostle anybody en route. The crowd swam around them like lukewarm coffee, creating the illusion that they would have to dogpaddle their way to their seats. The boy found the noise a stark contrast to his own tormented thoughts, and he could feel his anger and self-loathing taking a back seat to the strangely relaxing tune. He could now analyze his own situation without falling prey to it.  
  
         When everything had calmed down at home, Aunt Mary and Uncle Noah asked if there was anything they could do to make him feel better. Still rather weepy, Andy had suggested the karaoke bar, much like a child wanting an ice-cream after a harrowing ordeal. Looking back, he felt slightly ashamed in having them cater to his own weaknesses. Still, the Champion family had piled into the family Joltswagon and headed out in the rain to the small bar fifteen minutes away.  
  
         "Busy night," Noah said lightly, lifting his arm to avoid clocking an elder gentlemen in the head.  
  
         "I suppose everyone wants to drown their sorrows in music tonight," Mary pondered, following right behind him.  
  
         Andy put his hand to his chin, his vision growing slightly unfocused. Why had he chosen to rejuvenate himself with the very pastime he had enjoyed with Tarah only a night ago? Wasn't that just twisting the knife he had stabbed himself with earlier today? And yet, he felt a pull towards the karaoke bar, and knew this is what he really wanted to do right now.  
  
         They had reached their table, and everyone sat down in the semi-circular booth. Andy, Mary, and Noah did their best to get comfortable in the rough leather seat, all of them slouching back and putting their arms on the head rest. A moment later, a waitress put three glasses of water on coasters bearing the establishment's insignia. They drank lightly, letting its crisp sting envelop their tongues and wake them up.  
  
         A modest show of hands began clapping, and Andy turned his head back towards the stage. The song had ended, and the singer was retreating back to her seat, leaving the mike free for the next performer. A man wearing a blue sports coat and a rug on his head moved up to the standing mike. "Well, that was 'Send Me to the Sun" by Fred Sonata,'" he spoke to the small audience. "Next up, we have a young man who's making his first appearance here in three years: Andrew Champion!"  
  
         Some polite clapping sounded out through the karaoke bar. "That's you, dear," Mary whispered to the boy, nudging him with her elbow.  
  
         "Show 'em what the Champion house can do!" Noah bellowed, punching his nephew lightly on the arm.  
  
         Andy nodded, and left his drink to stand up and ease his way out of the booth. Steadily, he made his way through the tables towards the small stage. The eyes of the crowd were rather disconcerting, as they seemed to be watching his every move, ready to deliver divine judgment. But he just ignored his nervousness and proceeded towards the microphone, with the announcer stepping aside and leaving him to it.  
  
         Standing alone on the stage, Andy took a moment to catch his breath and relax. He hummed a few bars to himself, trying to make sure he still knew how to adjust his pitch. He looked out furtively to the people in the crowd, most of which had rather skeptical faces (they didn't seem to care for the last performer). But he caught the thumbs up Mary and Noah tossed him, and most of his fears were put to rest.  
  
         A moment later, the intro of the song began emanating from the speakers set up throughout the bar. It was a soft, slow tune, the kind that was popular ten years back and retained a following even today. Andy's face was now passive, a soft porcelain-like serenity to his features. Calmly, he dove into himself, bringing out one last piece of soul for his performance.  
  
         He could see her in his mind's eye, her memory glowing though the dusty haze of the room. She was crying, turning away from him. But Andy couldn't forget her clear blue eyes or her passion for life. There was a promise there, a journey into a new world, the mystery of a smile waiting to be solved.  
  
         Tarah...  
  
         And then, he began to sing.  
  
-  
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*****  
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         Andy leaned against the wood paneling, his arms crossed against his chest and his eyes half-closed. Somewhat lethargically, he turned his head towards the stage, squinting from the multicolored lights hanging overhead. Aunt Mary and Uncle Noah were singing a duet, an old timey song that only the older generation really appreciated. The crowd seemed to enjoy this as much as Andy's own song, though.  
  
         He had done well on stage, he considered. The crowd had enjoyed what he had put into his singing, and he had won them over two-fold. Many of the spectators had given him a bit of congratulations or a slap on the back, which he politely accepted with a smile. It did feel good knowing that something he did actually had a positive effect on people.  
  
         He sighed lightly, leaning his head down and closing his eyes. Ultimately, it really didn't matter what the crowd thought of his song. It was just something he had to get out, like a soap-box speech at an assembly. Whether they liked him or hated him, the boy could feel a new spark of life buzzing in his stomach, just like the butterflies Tarah loved so much.  
  
         Andy finished this thought with a small smile, then lowered his head and closed his eyes, letting the music take him away to a different place. The melodies and chords drifted like fish down a winding river, caught and filleted by his ears for his personal enjoyment.  
  
         A moment later, a voice broke through the clouds that had settled over his mind. "Hey, didn't expect to see you here!" it cried, strong yet feminine. "Andy, right?"  
  
         The boy's arm hairs stood on end as his subconscious recalled the voice. Quickly, he woke up to the world and took a look at his present company. "Maru Mari!" he exclaimed, his eyes widening like saucers at a five-star restaurant.  
  
         The forest-maned girl giggled, folding her arms. "That's me!" she said cheerfully, smiling.  
  
         The noises of the crowd moved around them lazily. "W-what are you doing here?" Andy asked, feeling a bit of unworthiness overtake him.  
  
         "I started coming here about two years ago, when I first moved here from Aviania," she explained, gesturing with her hands for emphasis. "I actually want to sing for a living, so I like to get in some practice in front of a live audience whenever I can."  
  
         "Oh," Andy said dumbly, his facial expression something in-between entranced and embalmed. The two stood in silence for a moment more, the train of conversation reaching a twist in the rails. Determined to keep the stacks puffing, he racked his mind for something to say. "Um, I just sing for my own sake," he tried, smiling nervously and trying not to choke.  
  
         "Probably the best reason to sing there is," Mari responded, her face beaming, and Andy smiled back. Her easy going attitude was infectious; Andy felt more comfortable with his crush than ever before, and a sliver of an idea was starting to scrape against his rib cage.  
  
         "So, what made you come out tonight?" she asked. "The announcer guy said Andrew Champion hadn't been here in three years."  
  
         At that, the boy turned his gaze towards the floor, his smile waning slightly. "I had some things I wanted to get off my chest," he admitted, somber as an old man. "Singing seemed to be the best way to do it."  
  
         The idea he was grappling with rose into his gullet and gnawed at the back of his throat like a sparking spitfire. Mari was his most important crush, and was proving to be both smart and pretty. Maybe she would... "You...you know Tarah Reichardt, right?" Andy asked tentatively, his eyes widening reflexively with the emotionally dangerous conversation he was beginning.  
  
         "Tarah?" Mari's face knotted up for a brief moment. "Yeah, she actually tutors me sometimes in biology. I sort of suck at it." She put a hand to her chin thoughtfully, frowning. "She was actually really depressed today, and didn't even talk my ear off about the joy of different types of chlorophyll."  
  
         Andy regarded Mari's words with a saddened expression, melancholy overpowering his nervousness. "So she's not okay, huh...?" he said quietly, more to himself than to the girl in front of him.  
  
         "Doesn't seem like it," she affirmed, grimacing slightly. Suddenly, her eyes widened. "Wait a sec, Champ, all this is about Tarah?" Mari questioned him, looking like she just fit a jigsaw piece into place. "Something happen between you two?"  
  
         The boy hesitated, wondering whether he should back out of this conversation. And yet, he was in over his head no matter what; he clung to his faith in Mari like a life preserver. "It was Professor Clark's free-will exercise," he admitted finally, closing his eyes with a mix of slight embarrassment at having such fun with a nerd, and heavy embarrassment for his failure. "We were at my house, and it ended with us...having a lot of fun." He peered at her through half-slitted eyes. "What should I do?"  
  
         "What do you want to do?" Mari pressed.  
  
         Andy's resolve was quickly tumbling forward as if running downhill, and the admission fell out of his mouth before he could stop it. "Well, be her friend." As the words left his lips, he quickly looked away and touched them, as if he couldn't believe that he was actually saying all this, how reckless he had become.  
  
         Mari was smiling gently at him, her eyes twinkling with a strange mixture of pride and mirth. "I think I gotcha," she said, gripping her waist. "You really want to make it up to the kid, but you don't know if you can do it if nobody approves. So you're talking to me, hoping that I'll give you reassurance and tell you what you want to hear. I gotta tell ya; I like an opportunist."  
  
         "Opportunist..." The boy jolted a bit, the implication of her words hitting him like a caffeinated drink poured over his head. How did I get so transparent?  
  
         She laughed gaily, a much kinder sound than the jeers of Justin and Slick. "You don't need it, Andy," she said, shaking her head. "You don't need anybody's permission to do what you want to do. Just go do it, go get that nerd girl of yours. Do it just like how you came and talked to me."  
  
         Andy sighed, feeling slightly unraveled by Mari's acute perception. "I guess it's just a little hard or something," he admitted with a slight blush, peering off to the side.  
  
         "Free-will doesn't make every decision easy," she stated matter-of-factly. "It's not supposed to be easy, anyway. You've got to apply yourself in this world if you want something in it. That's what I believe."  
  
         Andy looked at her, detecting something familiar in her words. "Did you hear about Mr. Clark's project?" he asked.  
  
         Mari smiled, lowering her head so that her bangs formed a curtain over her eyes. "I don't get all that junk in that class about free-will vs. determinism," she said. "Everything we do is a decision, big and small, easy or hard. You're responsible for every mistake, and every victory. Once you know that, you can do anything."  
  
         The long-tressed lass leaned against the same wall Andy was stationed at, looking up at the twinkling lights above. "So what I do is to take every day as a new opportunity for me to express myself," she said, a slow smile flowing to her lips. "I think about all that I can accomplish before the sun goes down, and it gives me energy that way. I mean, life's never boring that way." She turned towards the boy with a smile. "Right?"  
  
         Andy stared at the girl, transfixed by more than her outer beauty. The words struck a special place in his heart; it was simple common sense he always knew deep down inside, but now he could finally say it to himself. Suddenly, he felt a tremendous strength developing from within, along with an almost giddy feeling. "Yeah, that's sounds real good," he said, as if the idea was still dawning within him.  
  
         He straightened up. "Yeah!" he cried out, clenching a fist dramatically. "I'll just try a little harder!" Andy turned towards Mari and grabbed her hands. "Thanks a lot!" he told her, shaking them as if offering a presidential accolade.  
  
         "Uh, yeah!" she stammered, a bead of sweat rolling down the side of her face.  
  
         Their hands remained tied together for a moment more. Then, upon realizing what he was doing, the boy suddenly let go of her hands. "Uh, sorry," he said nervously, putting his hands behind his back.  
  
         "It's alright," Mari responded, looking a little bit embarrassed herself.  
  
         "Andy, time to go," a soft voice spoke out from the other end of the karaoke bar.  
  
         Andy turned to see his aunt and uncle at the front door, looking like they were about to step outside. "Uh, looks like my ride is about to go," he said with a chuckle. "Sorry..."  
  
         "Well, I'm probably going to get called soon anyway," she said, looking over to the empty stage. "See ya later!"  
  
         The boy nodded briefly, then started to walk on over to his family, leaving her behind. Then, he stopped and whirled around. "Mari!" he suddenly called out, struggling to keep his voice clear.  
  
         Mari blinked. "What is it?" she asked, her face clueless and innocent.  
  
         "...Alright if we have...talks like this more often?" he asked her, ignoring the blush that came to his face. "Yeah, I know you said I don't need anybody to tell me what's right and stuff, but...can we just talk sometime?"  
  
         The girl stood with a blank expression on her face, but Andy held steadfast, despite feeling like he had blown it. And soon, she broke out her honest smile once again. "Sure," she answered, nodding her head.  
  
         Andy's grin was like the Cheshire Cat's. With happiness in his heart, he strolled on through the crowd, who were already cheering for the next performer. Meeting up with Mary and Noah, he walked with them to the door, swinging it open and letting an aftershower air blast into the establishment. "Hey Uncle Noah, can we stop by one more place before we go home...?" he asked as they left the karaoke bar for the twilight town outside.  
  
         He had been crawling through the gutters just a scant few hours ago, and somehow he had bounced out of it like a pinball into the high score zone. He was on a roll, and the only thing to do was to keep on rolling. I can choose who I want in my life. I can choose my own destiny. Andy's eyes erupted with a serpentine fire. I'm still in this fight!  
  
-  
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*****  
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         It was a small dwarf of a house, a one-story dwelling typical of this part of the neighborhood. Andy's own house was two stories; though only a three-minute drive away, there was a marked difference between his side of the neighborhood and hers. An elegant, baby ash tree livened up the front yard, giving the humble Reichardt residence a fantastical look. Between the unfamiliar setting, and the fact that he had never dared visit before tonight, Tarah's house made him feel a stranger in a strange land, and there was no stopping the skips in his heart.  
  
         The engine of the Joltswagon rumbled behind him, and he turned to find Aunt Mary leaning out the window. "Andy, are you sure you're going to be alright out here?" she asked, a look of maternal concern washing over her features. "You want us to wait a little while for you?"  
  
         Andy shook the cobwebs out of his head; he had been standing out here in the cold for two minutes. "I'm fine," Andy said, forcing some resolution into his voice. "I'll call you when we're done, okay?"  
  
         Mary smiled, and reached into the backseat. "Don't forget your notes, now!" she told him, a sparkle of mirth dancing in her eye as she handed the four pages of work Tarah and he had done on the free-will project. "You don't want to start from scratch, my little philosopher!"  
  
         "It's barely enough to count as notes." Andy relaxed a bit as he took the proffered pages with a smile. "Thanks."  
  
         "We're wasting gas," Uncle Noah reminded them from the driver's side. "Go on, Andy!"  
  
         "Right, right," Andy said, turning back to the house, and his imminent conflict.  
  
         Leaving the family station-wagon behind, Andy proceeded down the cobblestone walkway leading to the front door, his feet splashing in the small puddles left over from the rainstorm. As he moved closer to Tarah's house, he felt the strange, unnatural sensation return, as if his every step took him further and further away from his niche with Justin and Slick. It was like a jaunt in the jungle, with a handful of schoolwork to serve as traveling gear. He reacted to these jitters with a clenched jaw, refusing to give into this intrinsic cowardice again.  
  
         Arriving at the door, his finger lanced out to the doorbell before more trepidation could set in. The chime was elegant and grand, more fitting for a manor-house than a neighborhood hovel. Again, nervousness attacked him, and he fought the urge to glance back at the Joltswagon, his only escape back to a Tarah-less lifestyle. Remembering Mari's words about free-will, he dug his heels into the welcome mat, as if gluing himself in front of the house.  
  
         Mercifully, a shadowy figure from beyond the curtains materialized to answer the bell. The door opened, and a thirty-something woman with youngish features greeted Andy, her long, blond hair twisting down her back in a braid. She stared down at Andy, her protuberant eyes fixated on his. "Can I help you?" she asked. placing her hand on her hip.  
  
         Andy's voice caught in his throat, and he gulped down a butterfly mouthful. "I...um, is this Tarah Reichardt's address?" he tried, truly hating how awkward the question came out.  
  
         "Oh, you must be Andrew, Tarah's classmate!" The woman smiled; a bright, openhearted grin resembling Tarah's own. "Did Tarah forget some schoolwork at your house last night?"  
  
         The boy regarded the papers containing the notes he took with Tarah. "Sort of," he answered, his experiences with Tarah entering his thoughts like a flood. "Can Tarah come out, please?"  
  
         Tarah's mother averted her eyes and put a hand to her chin. "She's kind of moody today," she said, more to herself than Andy. "When she came home this afternoon, she rushed immediately to her room and shut the door. She hasn't let me talk to her, but I think something happened."  
  
         Once more, unpleasant feelings arose in his heart; this time; it wasn't fear. "I know," he admitted, finding his voice amidst his shame. "I need to talk to her about that."  
  
         She looked down at him, a look of suspicion now on her face. Yet Andy's gaze, however remorseful, was firm, and his jaw was set in all seriousness. Seemingly understanding his intentions, the smile returned full-force. "Well, I'll see if she can come out for a chat!" she said, moving aside so that the boy could enter. "My name's Margaret. You should probably just call me by that."  
  
         Andy nodded to her, and walked through the doorway. On impulse, he took a look behind him, and saw Noah and Mary leaving the driveway and coasting down the street behind a host of trees. Turning back to the foyer, he found the Reichardt family heirlooms in front of him, cabinets containing many oddball ornaments like painted pinecones, glass insects, and small clay urns. Just like that, his old world was gone, and he was in Tarah's.  
  
         Before Andy could contemplate this further, Margaret walked down the hall a ways and called for her daughter. "Tarah, there's someone at the door for you!"  
  
         "Who is it, Mom?" a shrill, chirping voice answered. Andy's heart leapt in his throat at the familiar, eccentric wark.  
  
         "Andrew Champion!" the woman said. "From school!"  
  
         Margaret waited with Andy for an answer, tossing a quick apologetic look at the young lad. After a while, though, the silence became stark, and the two could hear the kit-cat clock on the wall clicking away the seconds. A minute more passed, and Margaret tried again. "Tarah?" she projected, putting a hand to her mouth. "It's your friend Andrew! Don't you want to see him?"  
  
         Again, she was met with silence, and Margaret turned towards Andy with a flash of concern. "I've never gotten this from Tarah before!" she breathed. "What happened with you two?"  
  
         Andy grit his teeth behind his lips, his eyebrows furrowing with determination. "I'm going in there," he told Tarah's mother, keeping his eyes locked on the hallway ahead.  
  
         As Margaret watched with a hand to her mouth, Andy proceeded through the cluttered house, blocking out everything else but that brief snippet of Tarah's voice. After several small turns, he reached a door with a cut-out of an exotic spider hanging on a nail by a string. He placed his hand on the knob, its slick, polished brass shocking him with a static spark. Taking one last deep breath, he opened the door, letting out a swath of bright light that hit him in the face like the radiance of the heavens.  
  
         The first thing he noticed was her ocean blue eyes, opening up like shutter-lenses behind her glasses. Her entire face was pale with shock, her lips trembling very slightly in a uncertain rhythm. Tarah's pigtails hung like ropes from a gallows, giving her a worn, somber appearance that was in contrast to the sprightly, overeager girl he had come to know. Wearing a pair of sweatpants and a light t-shirt, she was sprawled out on the bed and playing with a pet lizard she kept in a fish tank.  
  
         Andy and Tarah stared at each other a moment more. Then, Tarah turned away, her face unreadable as she resumed petting her lizard friend. He wasn't sure, but Andy thought he could see her stiffen a bit, as if preparing for a fierce blow. Her eyes were hidden now, the light from the ladybug lamp causing an eerie shine on the lenses of her glasses. She was in the room with him, and yet she was not, her inner emotions locked away in the depths of her heart.  
  
         Andy took a step forward, gathering up his nerve. "H-hi, Tarah," he started, his hand gripping the papers reflexively. "I came by to tell you...I'm really sorry about what I did with Justin and Slick. I wasn't thinking straight, and I didn't mean it. I just...can we make this right again?"  
  
         The girl's mouth tightened into a small line. "You really hurt me, you know," she said softly, closing the top of her fish tank in a deliberate motion.  
  
         Suddenly, Tarah turned on him with a savage expression. "How could you do that to me!?" she screamed, pure fury in her eyes as she sprang off the bed like a panther. "You treated me just like everyone else does! I thought you were my friend!" Her entire body was quaking as her voice lowered to a sorrowful croak, tears streaming down her cheeks. "But you're not..."  
  
         Andy's own eyes were starting to water, and on instinct, he reached out to touch her shoulder. She angrily shook him off, wiping her nose as she choked out another humiliated sob. Just like after the incident on the sports field, she wouldn't look at him, as if he were lower than the bugs and spiders she loved to research. Andy felt even lower than that.  
  
         He moved around to her side, forcing her to meet his gaze. "Tarah, I...I am your friend," he told her, leaning forward so that she couldn't break eye contact easily. "Joining in with those guys was stupid and cowardly, and I hate myself for it. I'll never hurt you like that again. I promise."  
  
         Andy turned away, his expression darkening. "And it wasn't just you I ran away from, either," he said as he began pacing about the room. "I've been going over things, and I think I've been running away for years. My friends, Justin and Slick, I mean, I just do what they do. This week was the first time I ever tried something different, something I wanted."  
  
         Tarah bit her lip, fidgeting in place. "All lifeforms follow patterns based on their biology and environment," she spoke hesitantly, as if reciting from a textbook. "It's the law of Nature."  
  
         Andy frowned, remembering similar words coming from her yesterday when they were working on their project. "You're wrong, Tarah," he told her. "We have so many possibilities for learning and growth. Even your nature programs show us this. I've seen instances where cats more or less raise dogs, like...an extended family."  
  
         Tarah's eyes widened, and she raised her head to stare at him willingly. "You watched Unusual Affinities on the Animal Channel," she gasped, a trace of wonder in her voice. "That's one of my favorite shows."  
  
         "Yeah." The smile shone off Andy's face like a gleaming apple. "I remember you talking about it in class one day."  
  
         A burst of inspiration hit him, and he shrugged off his green jacket. "This jacket I got, I bought it because it had Slick's favorite hockey team on it." he explained, holding the garment out for her to examine. "It was just so I could pretend to talk about sports with him. I don't even like hockey that much. I never knew what's going on the few times I watched it."  
  
         "Yeah, it's really violent too!" Tarah smiled, a beam of light in a dark cloud. "And the jacket doesn't match your hair."  
  
         Andy nodded, though he had never thought of the color clash before. "I can't do this anymore," he finished up, tossing the jacket away like an empty trash bag. "I've done it for three years, and I'm tired. I want to get to know myself, and I want to get to know you." He ran a hand through his shaggy mane, feeling self-conscious with all the speechifying. "W-what do you say?"  
  
         Tarah's voice was like a ghostly spirit. "That sounds cool, Andrew," she said, her smile warming her face like hot chocolate.  
  
         Andy smiled in kind, a burst of energy flowing through him. "Tarah, we still have our notes from last night," he continued, as she moved closer to him. "If we start working right now, we can probably..."  
  
         All further conversation was cut off as Tarah leapt upon him in a vice-like hug, knocking the pages from his hand. She clutched his forearms, her head nestled to the side of his neck. After a moment's pause, Andy's arms slowly found their way around the girl, feeling the gentle warmth from her back. Her entire frame built up and released a shuttering sigh; she felt featherweight, fairy-like.  
  
         "I knew you were different," she whispered into his ear, her breath heavy on his pale skin.  
  
         Andy closed his eyes, feeling his shoulders relax. The mind's mists were clearing up, and for the first time in years, he let himself feel the emotions he had buried deep within himself. In Tarah's arms, it was warm, the human contact three worlds away from the false fun-house he had been sharing with Justin and Slick. It was the real world, the world he remembered exploring with his mother, and the world where Tarah now waited for him in the sun of a new day.  
  
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Next Up- the Conclusion!


	5. Different and Cool (Friday)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the final day of the project, Andy delivers his report.

         Mr. Clark's crowded classroom was alive with the chattering of children, like a pentagon of pintsized politicians. They were speaking about their weeklong project with gusto, bantering back and forth enthusiastically on how they did. The school board would've been pleased with the interest they were showing in school matters. To be fair, however, most of the conversation was dealing with how one project was going to another project's ass.

         The conversation died as the teacher reentered the room, much like a concert hall does when the conductor gets started. And this conductor, with his ruler tapping his shoulder, demanded nothing short of silence. Mr. Clark stood like a grand commander at the front of the class, ready to deal out prize or punishment at will. There would be no mercy today.

         "Class, as you know, this is the final day for our project," he began methodically, stalking about before the white board. "I have heard about many of the results by hearsay. Some of them were honorable." Here, he stared at a batch of reliable A students, who sat smugly in their seats. "Some were very dishonorable." His gaze shifted to the back row, where two students stiffened visibly at the unwelcome attention.

         "I wish he wouldn't bring that up," Slick muttered to Justin, melting under his teacher's leaden gaze.

         "We have many varying stories among us, which are sure to be inspiring," Mr. Clark continued, halting in-between the middle rows of seats. "Two students have requested before class that they go first. Mr. Champion, Ms. Reichardt." He gestured to two seats at opposite ends of the room. "Please come forth."

         The classroom's collective mouth was agape as Andy and Tarah proceeded to the front of the classroom, looking like it was the most natural thing in the world to be together. Coming to a halt just to the left of Mr. Clark, they stood side by side, with one paper between them. For a few seconds, they whispered back and forth amongst each other on how to conduct their speech. Then, with a small cough, Andy began.

         "'I don't know much about free-will,'" he started, staring straight ahead at the twenty or so students crowded around the room. "'I always assumed I had it and that was that, but then I encountered events that made me doubt whether it even existed at all. It was then I realized that free-will was not just a God given right, it was also a tool to be used. It is from here that the term 'willpower' comes into play, for you need strength of character to wield it properly and enact your own design upon your life.'"

         At this point, Andy handed the paper over to Tarah. "'There are people who let life drift on by, without taking time to use their free-will," she chirped, a bright expression on her face. "'But everybody has the power to change their life for the better, no matter their situation. Children and adults alike, we can all put to use our free-will and shape a future we're proud to live in. This is what Andy and Tarah think.'"

         And then they stopped, and took a short bow to the class. The class was stunned.

         "Excellent job," Mr. Clark commended them, a slight smile on his face. "A rival for high school thinking, I believe. Class, you would do well to remember their words." He made a motion towards the desks. "You may take your seats."

         The two started back toward their desks, looking fairly confident in themselves. As they went, the entire class followed them with their eyes, as it just dawned on them what had happened. Tarah had a huge, ear to ear smile on her face, looking like she had just received her birthday gift five months early. And Andy had the stoic look of a warrior who had just won a battle, and was ready for the rest of the war.

         Along the way to his desk, Justin whispered harshly into Andy's ear. "Champion, what are you doing?" he hissed, leaning forward to look him in the face.

         Andy closed his eyes, any indecision on his face vanishing. "Whatever I want," he responded, a wry grin coming to his lips.

         Andy and Tarah took their seats, and class resumed.

-

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*****

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-

         In the hollows of the empty school corridors, two pairs of footsteps were heard echoing down to the lunchroom.

         "Thanks for carrying my bug jars, Andrew," Tarah said, happily proceeding down the hallway with her books tucked between her arms.

         "I still can't understand how you managed to get them from class to class," Andy responded, closing one eye and peering at her through the other.

         "I take two trips," she explained, giggling lightly and smiling up at him.

         The two reached the doorway to the lunchroom. The boy started to put his hand upon it, but Tarah quickly latched onto his arm. "You really don't mind, right?" she asked him, a somewhat vulnerable expression on her face. "Being friends, I mean?"

         Andy just smiled gently, putting his hand firmly on top of hers. "I'm ready for this," he told her. "So the rest of the world will have to get ready for us."

         The braided, bespectacled girl stood for a moment with a small blush on her face. But soon, she broke out into a beaming grin. "Okay!"

         They both turned back towards the door, making brave faces as they pushed it open. A beam of light burst forth, along with the lunch hour gabbing of the school. Tarah took a short glance at Andy, as if trying to reassure herself that the boy was still there. Andy just closed his eyes, holding his hand to his heart as if in prayer.

         It had been fine to inch along for a while, but he couldn't move like a caterpillar forever. The metamorphosis was done, and he had new wings for flying through the sky. To soar upon the currents he chose, with all the other butterflies of the world.

_Wish me luck, Mom._

         With Tarah, he headed through the door and into a new adventure. Ready for all the danger that came with being alive.

END

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Next Story- Different and Cool EXTRA: Over Coffee and Cake


	6. EXTRA - Over Coffee and Cake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aunt Mary goes to pick up Andy from Tarah's house.

  
**Different and Cool: Over Coffee and Cake**  
  
**By Reid M. Haynes**  
  
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*****  
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THURSDAY NIGHT  
  
  
         The fury of the rainfall had acquiesced over the past few hours, giving Mary some comfort as she strode towards the Reichardt residence to pick up her nephew. She had hung around for a few minutes out of sight to make sure Andy was allowed into his estranged friend's home, and once she had seen him go in, she decided to kill some time doing errands. Her attempt to sneak in a trip to the convenience store was thwarted by her husband, who had noticed her increasing weight, as well as her penchant for Weaver Brand Suncake. Though she knew he was right, couldn't he let her have just a little comfort food, considering how stressful the night had been?  
  
         As she rang the doorbell, Mary sighed, her eyes rolling to the ceiling. The whole thing had unfolded right in front of her eyes over the past week. Andy had hit the wall dealing with his week-long philosophy assignment and his partner Tarah Reichardt, a strange, bug-loving girl he didn't particular care for. As he stumbled through the project, Mary offered guidance to the best of her ability, but the simple philosophical truths she knew seemed to elude his young, fourteen-year-old mind. It was on Thursday that his hidden strife had finally caught up with him, culminating in an emotional collapse over Tarah, whom he had apparently hurt at school, and also completely changed his opinion of.  
  
         So they found themselves out and about, riding out the storm as Andy did his best to reconcile with Tarah. Mary couldn't help but puff up with pride at her nephew (better than puffing up with pastries, she could hear her husband's chiding tone in her head).  
  
         The doorknob made a clicking sound as it turned, and it swung open to reveal a youngish woman with braided hair draped over her shoulder. "Hello, you must be Andrew's mother," the woman said, holding out her hand. "I'm Margaret."  
  
         "So glad to finally meet you, Margaret!" Mary beamed, taking her proffered hand in an enthusiastic shake. "I'm Andy's aunt, actually, Mary."  
  
         "Hmmm?" Margaret's eyes flashed for a moment, like a disc drive processing new information. "Oh yes, I remember Tarah saying something about Andrew living with his aunt and uncle," she said finally "I'm sorry!"  
  
         "Oh, you're fine!" Mary laughed, secretly enjoying the idea that she could be thought of as Andy's mother. "It happens a lot."  
  
         "Well, we've only been in town for a few years, so I'm afraid we still don't know many people," the other woman said as she led Mary through the eccentrics aesthetics of her home (painted pinecones and clay urns, among other things). "I believe we saw each other at an Open House last year at Starlight Jr. High."  
  
         "I remember that!" Mary grinned. "The lemon pound cake you brought was to die for."  
  
         "Yes, I still have some from a couple days ago that I made for one of my husband's business functions," Margaret said, and Mary's tongue moistened in anticipation. "Perhaps you would like a piece?"  
  
         Mary's hands shot out and clasped Margaret's. "Would I!" she exclaimed, and then her self-awareness kicked in. "I mean, I don't want to be a bother or anything..."  
  
         Margaret's eyes widened at Mary's sudden outburst, but soon smiled benevolently.  
  
         A minute later, Mary and Margaret were seated at the kitchen table, helping themselves to pound cake and freshly ground coffee. While Margaret enjoyed her cake with restraint, Mary dug in with gusto, wolfing it down with all the wild abandon of a starving traveler from the Emerald Veldt. "Oh my!" Margaret gasped, putting her fork down for a moment. "You sure enjoy your confections!"  
  
         "I know, I'm awful, aren't it?" Mary swallowed her mouthful before continuing, having not completely lost her senses in her sugar rush. "My husband gets on to me all the time over my binging. I guess we all have to deal with some sort of temptation in our lives."  
  
         Margaret placed her hands together and closed her eyes. "A vulnerable spirit must be guarded against temptation," she intoned, and Mary marveled at the serene aura she was radiating. "May these sacred beads seal your inner gluttony."  
  
         "Oh that's not...whoa!!" Mary nearly spilled her coffee as Margaret draped a beaded necklace around her shoulders. "R-Really, it's no problem," she stammered, fingering her new beads with trepidation. "I just need to get back on top of Biff Chopin's Weight Loss Plan for Women."  
  
         "With a little bit of spiritual help on your side now." Margaret smiled warmly at her.  
  
         Mary looked back up at her host, finding the mysterious woman's enthusiasm infectious. "Well, I guess I'll take any help I can get!" she bubbled, laughing in spite of herself. Her eyes shot open, remembering why she was here. "Oh, I better get Andy!" she said, easing her chair from the table. "Can't spend too much time gorging!"  
  
         "Tarah and Andrew were in the living room when I last checked on them." Margaret followed Mary's lead as they got up together. "Let's take our snack there." Many nodded, and they picked up their coffee and cake and headed into the next room.  
  
         When Mary entered the living room, she was hit with a sight almost too cute for words. The woman put a hand to her mouth as she observed Andy and Tarah, asleep on the sofa with paper and pens all about them. Tarah was leaning against Andy, her large glasses drifting crookedly off her nose like a teenage professor taking a nap by her beakers. Andy's mouth was open, with a small bit of drool dangling off in a undignified expression, but this did not dampen the mood for Mary.  
  
         "Oh, it's so sweet...!" Mary said, a tear coming to her eye.  
  
         Margaret smiled wistfully. "He's Tarah first friend, you know," she said, walking over to her slumbering daughter. "Before we settled down in Starlight City, we had moved every year for my husband's work in the army, and Tarah was a plant that could never sow its roots. Two years ago, Samson started his own business as an independent weapons contractor for the police, so we were able to stay put for the first time since we got married." Margaret pulled Tarah's pigtail out of her face with the gentleness of a mother cat. "She's always been a bit of an odd child, but I think these two are going to have a long future together."  
  
         Mary's face was soft, yet somber as she approached her nephew on the couch. "Andy's had it tough, too," she told the other woman, regarding the young lad's slowly maturing features. "His parents were killed in a car accident about three years ago, and he's never been quite the same. He used to be such an eager, boisterous boy, but afterwards, he was so quiet and unsure, like he didn't know what to make of the world anymore. I thought he had come out of his shell this year, but we had a big blowup at our house tonight, so we ended up here to try and fix things."  
  
         Margaret leaned in; her large, unblinking eyes seemed to envelop Mary's entire being. "You blame yourself for Andy's strife," she said.  
  
         Mary smiled sadly, looking down into her murky coffee. "Andy's mother was my best friend," she told the woman, trusting her almost completely now. "She was such a spitfire, nothing like me at all, and Andy and her took to each other like peas and carrots. It was like Andy was being fed a constant supply of positive energy, and he was on full-power all the time. Ever since she passed on, I tried so hard to fill that role, but I just couldn't be that kind of inspiration for him..."  
  
         "Oh, but I think there's another way to look at it!" Margaret waved off the morose pondering with a smile. "It was you and your husband that took Andy back to reconcile with my daughter. He may have had to figure out some things on his own, but you always made sure the right path was cleared off for him. You talk to him often, do you not?"  
  
         "Absolutely!" Mary said, almost offended by the idea she wasn't on top of her nephew's moods. "I've never let him slip through the cracks, if I can help it!"  
  
         Margaret nodded. "We don't need to be all powerful," she explained. "We just need to be their support when things get tough. And I know he trusts you to be that for him."  
  
         Mary smiled, looking back over to the woman. "You sure know how to get to the heart of the matter," she said, with a teasing tone. "Is this clairvoyance from your mystic charms?"  
  
         "Nope." Margaret shook her head. "Just a mother recognizing a mother."  
  
         Mary's breath caught in her throat at the insinuation, but Margaret just continued to smile at her. It was subtle, but Mary could feel a small weight lift that she didn't even know she was carrying.  
  
         "...mmmmmph..." a low groan was coming from the sofa, and Mary looked down to find Andy fidgeting by Tarah's side. His eyes were still closed, but he was waving his arm about as if trying to reach for something.  
  
         Mary leaned forward, and shook his shoulder gently. "Andy, time to go home," she whispered, as Andy raised a sleepy eyelid to her. "School's tomorrow."  
  
         "Mmm'kay..." Andy muttered, weakly rising to his feet as Mary helped him up.

         With an arm around his shoulder, Mary guided him to the foyer, stopping briefly to take the kids schoolwork that Margaret had gathered up for her. "Thank you so much for your hospitality, Margaret," she told the woman. "I'll make it up to you, I promise."  
  
         "No thanks are needed," Margaret said, then turned her head to look at Tarah, who was now curled up on the sofa clutching a pillow. "But please continue to take care of Andy. For Tarah's sake as well."  
  
         Mary smiled at her half-asleep nephew, who looked at her with a bleary gaze. "That's what I'm here for," she said.  
  
 END

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Next Story- Different and Cool: Love's a Polygon


	7. Different and Cool: Love's a Polygon (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andy and Tarah have been friends for a few weeks, but trouble mounts at school in the form of increasing peer pressure.

  
**Different and Cool: Love's a Polygon**  
  
 **By Reid M. Haynes**  
  
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*****  
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 _Journal of Tarah Reichardt; Entry for 11-21-893 A.S._  
  
 _Me again! It's been a while since I've written to you, but everything's been really busy lately. The season of the Fall Webworm is almost over, and I wanted to catalog it before winter comes. I've been studying them late at night, and if I'm lucky, I'll have all the info I'll need to give it a place among the other insects of autumn in my book. Isn't that great?_  
  
 _Mom says I spend too much time outdoors alone, and that I should be with friends when it's late. But I've never had friends, so I don't think there's anything wrong with doing what I enjoy, right? She's always saying things like that, but she's really big into nature too. Did you know that she once saw a pink katydid in the forests outside the Starlight City limits? She didn't manage to get a picture, but she told me she was positive that's what she saw, so I believe her. I wish I could've been there to see it too._  
  
 _Actually, that one part's not true: I really do have a friend, now. His name is Andrew, Andrew Champion. I've known him since 5th grade, and now he knows me! He's always so nice, and he's really brave, too. Well, actually he did flinch when I showed him the tarantula that lives in our backyard, but I could tell he was trying not to. He tries really hard at everything._  
  
 _Whenever I think about Andrew, I just can't stop the smiles from coming. I'll bet this is going to be a great year. I know it!_  
  
\-----  
  
         Softly closing the small writing tablet she off-and-on used as a journal, Tarah took a look behind her through the window of the classroom, outside of which was the games field. The myopic, pigtailed girl haphazardly rubbed her glasses, steamed slightly from the heating system, and returned to watching the 7th and 8th Grades playing various impromptu sports games in the cold fall air. A flash of aqua-green hair shot in between the heads of two basketball players, then quickly disappeared behind the crowd. But even that brief visage was enough to get Tarah out of her seat in a scramble for the door, leaving behind the fish tank she used for transporting animals larger than insects.  
  
         Taking big, bounding steps, Tarah made it down the hallway and to the door leading outside. Her face shone with eagerness, a bright point to anyone's day were there anyone around to see it. She fumbled for the door handle, missing it twice before landing her hand on it, pushing it open and letting a stream of early afternoon light soak the hallway. She was not a klutzy person, but the exciting times had the tendency to boggle her nervous functions.  
  
         As the door swung against the brick structure that made up Starlight Jr. High, she scampered out onto the sports field. The students darted about the green grass in small groups, trying unsteadily to keep their own individual games going in spite of all the others. Though the gawky girl had made a noisy enough entrance, they gave no notice to Tarah's arrival. Actually, the kids that did notice her were doing their best to avert their eyes as quickly as possible, some taking a few steps away to distance themselves from her.  
  
         Tarah frowned slightly at this snubbing, but continued to sort the students out with her eyes, peering over each group in an attempt to spy that aqua-green hair again. She looked between the impromptu soccer game played between two sets of cones, the touch football game that took up the rest of the field, and all the way to the basketball game playing on the blacktop way off to the side. Finally, she spotted a lone lad idly bouncing a blue, rubber dodgeball against a small dirt mound off the side of the main field. She proceeded a few steps, waved her hand up in the air, and called his name. "Andrew!!"  
  
         Instead of ducking for the nearest cover like the other kids, the boy turned to peer at her, smiling lightly. With a strange benevolence in his eyes, he waved back, his friendly posture indicating that, for once, her presence would not be unwelcome.  
  
         Tarah's grin widened, and she quickly closed the distance between the school doors and the boy's spot on the field. Any obstacle, whether it be stray ball or lounging student, was vaulted like a hurdle in the 100 Meter Dash. Stopping a mere six inches from the boy's nose, she folded her arms behind her back. "Hi, Andrew!" she chirped cheerfully, jerking back and forth eagerly.  
  
         "Hey, Tarah," Andy replied, dropping the ball by his foot and booting it away. "Where've you been?"  
  
         The energy in her eyes speared out from behind her glasses. "There's a new bug that I just found today!" she told him, moving her arms about animatedly. "I'm so excited about showing you!"  
  
         His smile was honest and friendly. "Cool," he said, putting his hands on his hips.  
  
         Tarah nodded, then quickly dug in her clothes. She had managed to cram a small bottle in her pocket, which had been in there for two periods. Regardless, the bottle was in fine shape, and so was the insect inside. It was a small cerulean blue bug of the likes that had never been seen before in Starlight City, an ethereal cross between a lady bug and a beetle, and small enough so that both teens had to lean in closer to see it.  
  
         "This is the Blue Darkwind Beetle," she said, her eyes only for the small insect encased in its glass confinement. "It's almost exclusive to the meadows outside Neo Aviania, but I caught this one just outside my house. It's neat, huh?"  
  
         "Yeah, it kinda is," Andy replied, his eyes widened. And it was hard not to, for anyone with an affinity for insects would have a hard time categorizing this creature as anything but a treasure of the living world. Indeed, it was like a sapphire scarab, almost reflecting the two teens within its shining shell. The sunlight slid upon it and caressed it like a newborn child, kissing its body with tender warmth.  
  
         "Did you know it feeds almost entirely on mosquitoes?" she continued. "They say it's one of three reasons that the mosquito hasn't completely overtaken Neo Aviania. Of course, the roving liquorice lizard helps too..." Her eyes blinked a few times, and she let out a giggle of sudden self-consciousness. "Oops, sorry! Am I babbling again?" she said, smiling repentantly at her friend.  
  
         The boy only shook his head. "I'm not bored," he responded, looking back towards her with a slightly abashed face. "How can I be, with someone like you?"  
  
         Tarah's smile vanished for a moment, her breath catching in her throat slightly. She turned towards Andy, a slightly bewildered look on her face. He caught onto this new undercurrent of emotion, which wiped the grin off his face as well. But soon his soft smile was back, and so was hers.  
  
         BWONK! Andy jerked forward as if a gun hammer had smashed into the back of his skull. "Ow!" He held onto the back of his injured scalp, and Tarah looked to the boy in concern. She caught a bouncing shape off the tail end of her vision, which turned out to be the dodgeball he was dribbling earlier. By the raucous chuckling coming from Justin and Slick's side of the playfield, the perpetrators of this act were easy to point out.  
  
         "Better watch out for the cool kids, Champion," Justin taunted, putting one hand on his hip in a cocky pose.  
  
         "Dodgeball field ain't the place for bug-loving geeks!" Slick added, any potential benevolence in his suggestion squelched by his snickers.  
  
         Tarah puffed up in anger, her pigtails dropping like stalactites. "Hey, bugs are important to the ecosystem!" she screeched, glaring fiercely at the duo. "They get rid of a lot of the...uh...other bugs!" They only laughed nastily, the ugly little chortle of camaraderie amongst fellow villains.  
  
         "Just ignore them, Tarah," Andy said quietly, shaking his head free of any stars that had accumulated.  
  
         "I don't understand," Tarah begun anew, looking down at the bottle cradled within her grip. "What's so bad about having bugs for a hobby? I mean, if it weren't for the Blue Darkwind, at least 75% of the 7th Graders would be covered in bites!"  
  
         "Justin and Slick...well, they're just kinda narrow-minded." Andy replied, folding his arms behind his wounded head and looking up towards the sky. "I was too, for a while."  
  
         "It's in danger too, you know," she continued, her voice taking on a sad tone. Andy peered at her through the corner of his eyes. "Because of Aviania's expansion, the forests where they live are being cut down." A wistful smile forming on her lips. "Maybe that's why this one ended out here. Maybe he just wanted a home."  
  
         "I really hate over-development," he groused, a look of displeased agreement on his face. "You know, I think they tore down my favorite forest for a Winston Haynes Joltswagon dealership."   
  
         "Oh, the White Swift coalition was very mad about that." Tarah turned back to Andy, her eyes wide. "They're asking the city to set off some land to make a city park so that the wildlife can recover, but the big indutries are blocking it."  
  
         "Hum," Andy tapped a finger against his check. "I heard something about the Bishop Corporation being mixed up in that. That's Justin's family."  
  
         "Maybe that's why he doesn't like bugs?" she suggested, peering at him.  
  
         "Could be," the boy considered, a ghost of a smile on his face.  
  
         Tarah smiled back. "I'm glad you listen to me, Andrew," she told him. "Most people don't like to talk to me, you know, so it's great you think me and my bugs are important."  
  
         "Well, of couse you're important," Andy said, putting his hands on his hips in mock irritation.  
  
         At this moment, the school bell rang, effectively cutting off their trains of thought. They both looked around, and found their classmates making their way towards the school doors; slowly, as to stretch out the time between them and their afternoon classes. A couple of students meandered on the sports field for a moment longer; whether it was to organize an end to their game or to stall for time, it wasn't known. Soon, they too couldn't avoid the call of mandatory learning, and joined the others in a river of kids flowing around Andy and Tarah.  
  
         "I guess we need to go in," Tarah said, looking down at the grass with a wistful expression on her face. Even if was brief, she had enjoyed the time she had spent with Andy.  
  
         "Yeah," he responded, staring at the open doors that seemed to draw him in. He turned back towards the girl with a look that could almost be called apologetic. "Hey, you wanna eat lunch together later?" he asked her, a generous smile tacked on.  
  
         That brought a fresh look of excitement on her face. "Sure!" she answered him, smiling back.  
  
         A pleased look winked in the boy's eyes, and he nodded confidently. He then strode past her, stepping off the sports field and onto the concrete walkway that led up to the double doors. As he left, Tarah's smile waned in proportion to the increasing distance separating them. Questions tore up the tip of her tongue, sparking like severed livewire in an abandoned power plant.  
  
         "Andrew!" she called out to him, wondering if her voice would reach him.  
  
         The boy stopped mid-step, stumbling a bit. "What's up?" he asked, turning to her with a look of query on his face.  
  
         Tarah then grew pensive, a glimmer of doubt flickering like a candle flame in her downcast eyes. "Those boys...do they...I mean, are you...?" she stammered, suddenly feeling like her throat had a paperweight lodged in it.  
  
         Andy seemed to understand nonetheless, and just shook his head with good humor. "Don't worry about it," he said, a calm smile on his lips. "I can handle them."  
  
         Renewed confidence flowed through her, and she returned his grin wholeheartedly. They shared a wave of hands, and then the boy proceeded back into the middle school, leaving Tarah waiting alone by the sports field. A brisk breeze picked up from across the blacktop, flurrying her bangs against her forehead. She bore her face willingly to its gentle sting, taking in a chilling breath as her facial features relaxed into a state of vibrant bliss.  
  
         "Having someone is so nice," she said to herself, a lonely girl just now learning what it was to be fulfilled with friendship.  
  
-  
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*****  
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         Late morning Gym was a rocky affair for the smaller and weaker students, who found themselves repeatedly jostled by their larger rivals. There was a hot temper flowing through those that had been gifted with the athletic aptitude, and they used it like a weapon against their opposition. One might think that, because the class consisted of all girls, that it would be considerably less violent than a boy's Gym session. Not so; the inclusion of a girl's basketball team had piqued their competitive interests, and there was an ongoing effort to impress the powers that be in exchange for a spot in the second lineup.  
  
         Tarah tore the sweat-drenched towel off her matted hair, letting it flop down to lick the tiled floor. She brought a hand up to wipe her forehead, her bangs like dew dropped grass post April showers. She took a peek at the rest of the class in the girls' locker room, who were busy congratulating the school basketball star Maru Mari on a brilliant lay-up assisted by one of the other girls from the team. She didn't know much about basketball, but she did know as long as they were over there, they couldn't bother her.  
  
         In a middle school where the girls shot up above even the boys, Tarah was one of the smallest kids in her grade, so a few of the bigger girls thought they could knock her out of the running. This wasn't actually true, since she kept considerably active and was not clumsy. However, that didn't stop them from trying to create the illusion she was weak by tripping her up in any way they could. She wondered if it was less that they were trying to win and more that they simply didn't like her.  
  
         With a blank expression, Tarah got to gathering up her supplies for the next class. Her towel draped over her shoulder, she reached into her locker for her biology book, her notebook, and her many bug jars. She had an ongoing paranoia of leaving the objects of her hobbies in her other locker in the main building. She likened it to keeping a flighty pet under close eye rather than any real fear of the jars being tampered with.  
  
         BWIK! the locker door slammed with a metallic screech, causing the light hairs on Tarah's arm to prickle up. She turned her head both right and left before she spied the interloper: a tall, black-haired girl with a violet streak running through a clump left of her bangs. A stylish black glove embossed with the name “Lydia” covered the hand that had pushed the locker shut, and it was the one other extravagance to break up the uniform monotony of her gym clothes. But this glove, combined with her angular eyes, smirky facade and aforementioned violet streak gave her a somewhat harsh beauty, the kind of beauty that came wrapped and bundled with a villainess.  
  
         "Whatcha got there, Terrible Tarah?" she said in a voice dripping with bad humor. "Some friends to keep you company on the long trip to Dorksville?"  
  
         Tarah was a mite startled by Lydia's abrupt entrance, but answered without shame. "They're the new bugs I wanted to show the biology teacher," she spoke quietly. "I'm going to set them all free tonight."  
  
         The other girl's eyes narrowed in a fashion that would befit the snootiness of the meanest sorority girls. "I'm sure that coot'll love to bask in the glow of a no-life," she drawled, her hand lazily sliding down the locker door it had closed. "Might make him feel better about his boring job."  
  
         A lot of comments could fly past Tarah harmlessly, but she could see that Lydia was just egging her on. Averting her eyes, she went back to gathering up her school supplies, methodically sorting them with the jars on top of the books on top of the binder. Projecting an aura of quiet frostiness, she kept her back to the girl as she gathered all her things, including her overalls and shirt, and walked off to a stall where she could change out of her gym clothes without being harassed. Her pace was brisk, but it wasn't quite speedy enough to evade her tormentor.  
  
         "Too bad you're such a flat shrimp, otherwise you wouldn't have to change in there," Lydia commented as she walked beside, her hands clasped behind her back in a look of mock-innocence.  
  
         "Leave me alone," Tarah responded, her voice devoid of any passion.  
  
         The violet-stripped lass brightened with a visible burst of confidence. "What's wrong with a little talk between schoolmates?" she chirped, her cackle lending to her crow-like appearance. "It's as close to friends as you're gonna get."  
  
         The bespectacled girl waited for a moment at the door to the stall, the response coming unbidden. "I know what friends are like," she said quietly.  
  
         "That Champion guy?" Lydia almost guffawed. "Oh please! He's only there because he feels sorry for you. He'll get sick of being with you on the lowest rung of the popularity ladder soon enough."  
  
         "That's not true!" Tarah suddenly squeaked, turning around harshly with a stamp of her foot. "He likes me, he likes me a lot!"  
  
         "Heh, if you ask me, the kinds of girls he likes are more like me, or Mari Mari," Lydia said, flipping her hair in a decidedly vain gesture. "You know, the older, more developed ones."  
  
         At the last comment, the fire within Tarah's heart took a hard stamping, and she nearly choked on the fumes. Her eyes shivered with doubt, and she felt a lump start to form in her throat. Lydia's eyes widened a bit at this reaction, then reared back from the girl in disgust. "Oh God, don't tell me you're into him?!" she cried, gathering even more attention from the onlookers in the locker room. "Even a dope like him would think a hickey from you would be like a bug bite."  
  
         That was it for Tarah. She quickly pulled open bathroom stall, and hustled in with a grievous look in her eyes, slamming the door shut in Lydia's smiling face a moment later. "I'll be here when you get out," Lydia taunted, putting a hand to her mouth as if to emphasize her voice. Then, her eyes sparkled with a sly mirth. "Bug bites, oh now that's a pun!"  
  
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*****  
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         If this had only been an isolated incident, it would have been quickly forgotten: Tarah was good at shaking off the effect of her peers' taunts from long practice. As it actually was, however, Lydia's attack on her was the F minor prelude to the elaborate symphonic work entitled "Jeers from the Outside." The conductors were Justin and Slick.  
  
         It happened just as Tarah was leaving the school for home. Right before she headed down to the long sidewalk that lead to the street, she had picked up a few odd creatures to examine, so her earlier good mood was restored somewhat. She was almost ready to seek out Andy again and show him her latest bounty; Colt-eyed Caterpillars were rare at this time of year. Upon finding him, however, it was obvious he was busy with some other friends right then.  
  
         "...getting a little dorkier everyday, Champion," Justin Bishop finished up his jibe, pushing on Andy's temple and forcing him to lean his neck.  
  
         "Yeah!" Slick chortled, leaning over the shoulder of the silver-haired boy. "You might make high Dork King this time around!"  
  
         "Ha ha, funny," Andy responded, looking warily between the both of them. "Come on, cut it out."  
  
         Tarah frowned. Although he was putting up a tough front, she could tell Andy was unnerved in this situation. He was looking back and forth not only to keep the two troublesome teens in view, but also for his ride home, to sweet escape. And what was wrong with Justin and Slick? She knew they weren't friends with Andy anymore, but why did they keep picking on him like that?  
  
         "We got a great gift for you today," Justin told him, and there was a certain manic glee in his normally cool exterior, as if he had been waiting all day to say that. "Even gave up our cigarette break just to get it ready."  
  
         "I handcrafted it!" Slick piped up, his exuberant manner crying for the spotlight.  
  
         Justin grimaced at this, and simply reached into his satchel. It was a fairly manly satchel filled with cigarettes, pilfered test answers, and many other unsavory things suited to the boy needs. Nevertheless, the object that he pulled out was an oddity when compared to the rest of the renegade paraphernalia; bright yellow and littered with sequins. It was like something that would have been constructed for a casino showgirl, if the constructor was about six and had only glue and tape to work with.  
  
         "May Poindexters and Melvins bow down!" Slick announced loudly, as Justin placed the object on the beleaguered Andy's head. "All hail the Dork King!"  
  
         The blond boy's megaphone voice gathered the attention of a sizable crowd of students, who all stopped their conversation to view the show. Then, one by one, they all started chuckling, louder and louder, until it seemed the entire 8th Grade had erupted at the sight of the newly-adorned Andy. Tarah's face knotted in confusion, the object out of focus and indefinable. She took off her glasses and rubbed them, blinking twice before she placed the hooks back on her ears to get a better look.  
  
         It was actually a crown, a paper crown fit for a worker at a unhealthy fast-food restaurant. Though the sequins provided a certain carnival-level charm, it was the zinger wording in the middle that stole the show. "FOUR-EYED GEEKS ARE MY INSPIRATION" read in clear, bold letters, written by a black, permanent marker. Next to the text was an exaggerated recreation of Tarah's face, with swirlies on the glasses, a goofy smile, and altogether a look that would suit the real Tarah had she been a joke character in a children's anime.  
  
         Andy's face had erupted in a flush of crimson, looking around at the rest of the kids like he had just done a terrible deed in front of them. He took a look at his reflection in the glass, and grimaced like he couldn't stand to look at it. Then he looked at the crowd, filled with the laughing maws of students, the restrained smiles of amused teachers, and the sorrowful face of a pigtailed, bespectacled girl. Tarah's frown radiated unhappiness and the shared humiliation of both of them.  
  
         Tarah and Andy's eyes remained locked for a moment more. Then, Andy broke the two-way gaze and tore the crown off his head. "I don't believe this," he muttered, red-faced embarrassment giving way to red-faced anger. Crumpling up the thing in his hands, he tossed it furiously at Justin, who was still whooping it up along with Slick. Then, he took off to the other side of the carpool line, the mocking voices following him all the way.  
  
         Tarah took in the outrageous spectacle with trembling eyes, and clenched her fists in anger, hard enough to dig the nails into the skin and make it somewhat painful. She stared with uninhibited fury at Justin and Slick, as if her glasses would magnify her needle-like gaze into some sort of heat ray. A small consolation was Maru Mari walking up behind Justin and clocking him on the back of his head. "Idiot," Mari barked, her face sweet and pretty even with the scowl set upon it, and it made Tarah feel better.  
  
         But not nearly enough.  
  
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*****  
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         The edge of downtown Starlight City wouldn't win any awards for cleanliness. Many of the buildings, once housing high-end stores and specialty services, had fallen into disrepair, becoming little more than dilapidated structures lining the pothole ridden streets. It wasn't quite a slum, and there was usually a lot of workmen laboring on the area via the new city order for cleaning up the town. Still, it would take at least two more years before this part of town would resemble anything other than a scene in a commercial about adopting third-world children.  
  
         Moving in between a pair of girders aligned parallel on the ground, Tarah walked along the left side of the street, her eyes somewhat downcast. Her path took her safely outside the yellow caution tape and cones set up for the few people that came through the area, but the possible danger only mattered on a basic level to her. She paid little mind to the chatter of construction workers and the grating sounds of equipment, letting it turn into white noise in the contours of her brain. Her hands were stiff, and grabbing tightly onto the straps of her extra-large backpack, squeezing them roughly.  
  
         If someone asked Tarah what she was doing in this part of downtown, she would bring up the old plant nursery that still operated despite bad business. She would then cut the monologue short, because there was no point in being excited about your hobbies with such a heavy heart. She was still really worried about the carpool incident, but she couldn't talk about it yet, and was having a bit of trouble even thinking about it. Her mind had formed a knot consisting of Andy, Lydia, Justin and Slick, and maybe only a city-wide walk would loosen it.  
  
         Tarah let out a miserable breath, stopping on the side of the road for a moment to gather herself. Then, she continued the long hike to the bus station, where she would catch a ride home and turn in early for the night, right after Swampman Earl's Safari on the nature channel.  
  
         A glimmer of color caught the corner of Tarah's vision, and she instinctively turned to catch sight of this healthy splash amidst a sea of concrete and rubble. It was that familiar flash of tell-tale aqua-green hair, and by narrowing her eyes, she could make out the boy traveling on the right side of the street, nearing the corner. "Andrew...Andrew!" the girl called out, breaking into a gait that carried her halfway across the street in a hurry. He didn't hear her, and continued round the bend, forcing Tarah to start running after him.  
  
         Tarah made good time to the intersection, her hopeful fervor driving her like a jaguar hunting its prey. Whatever problems were brewing at school, Tarah and Andy were essentially alone now, where they could talk away from any judging eyes. She was sure Andy would like that.  
  
         Her initial conception proved invalid in the end, when she caught up with him at the next street. Andy was there, standing in front of a large planetarium that had stopping showing the stars for some time. And he wasn't alone, either. Leaning against the gateway was an older girl with long, leaf-green hair, a baseball cap with bat wings sticking out from the sides, and a benevolence that belied her role as the most popular girl in school.  
  
         "M-Mari?" Tarah stammered to herself, her jaw going slack for a moment.  
  
         The two were speaking now, and Tarah quickly shrunk back out of sight behind the corner. She peeked behind a brick building, hoping she hadn't been caught spying. Seeing them involved in their own matters, she tentatively tiptoed forward beyond the corner and closer to the couple, putting a hand to her ear to help her catch what they were saying. She could just make out snippets of what they were saying, and her mind automatically formed them into a conversation.  
  
         "...things that only you can help me with," Andy was saying, his tone recognizable as serious even from this distance. "Tarah can't know about any of this, you understand."  
  
         Mari was now talking, her posture strong and receptive, but Tarah couldn't make out a word of what she was saying. Andy started speaking again, quietly enough so that the pigtailed girl couldn't tell what he was saying either. The boy paused for a moment, obviously trying to steel himself for what he was going to say next. The next words that came out of his mouth were crystal clear to her, and chilled her to the bone. "I need you."  
  
         On Mari's part, the statement seemed to startle her slightly, who blinked her large eyes in wonderment at the proclamation. She then slowly started speaking again, with Andy adding his two bits a moment later. Then, she put a hand strongly on his shoulder, smiling with utmost fondness. Andy smiled back appreciatively, looking like he had just gotten rid of a large weight from his shoulders.  
  
         The two stood at the entrance to the planetarium a moment more, entrapped in the wrappings of camaraderie. Then, Mari turned around and entered the large structure, letting the door swing wide behind her. The ocean-haired youth wasted no time in following her in, putting out a hand to catch the door. Once inside, the door slowly pushed itself shut until it fell into place within the steel frame, the nearly soundless impact heard by Tarah as a route permanently closing off to her.  
  
         Tarah nearly toppled over, her legs shaking and her hands clenched into tiny fists. Her eyes watered over with emotion, and she shook her head fiercely to try to regain control of herself. Swallowing hard, she took a deep, shuddering breath, and turned her gaze back to the planetarium, still abandoned by all pretenses. But she knew who was in there, who was with whom, and she couldn't look at it any more and broke off into a run, away from the building, the downtown area, and Andy and Mari.  
  
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*****  
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         In the time approaching midnight, the streetlights shone down across the streets and sidewalks, illuminating a lush, but lonely community. As a subdivision a ways from the city, it was filled with mainly compact, affordable houses for well-off young couples and small families who liked a lot of trees in their neighborhood. The Reichardt residence was a small, one-story as well, its chief bragging right being the baby ash tree in the front yard. The light from a window broke through the misty darkness around the house, the young girl beyond the glass the only one with the energy, and the suffering, to stay awake.  
  
         Tarah lay flat on the single bed, her arms outstretched to either side, staring intently at the white, drywall ceiling. Her small room was largely a nature-enthusiast’s dream, packed with volumes of encyclopedias stuffed with ladybug bookmarks, posters of various exotic animals, and several potted plants next to the window. What normally gave her comfort though was ignored tonight in favor of the blank ceiling that acted as a marker board for her thoughts. Morbid thoughts were they.  
  
         She should have known something so wonderful couldn't last. Deep down, she knew people thought she was a locust in the middle of a field of wheat, and that they didn't like her. Andy had tried to like her, but he was a stalk of wheat too, and had to stay alive. Now he was with Mari, where he was safe and happy.  
  
         Tarah's eyes squeezed shut as she tried hard to keep from crying. She couldn't and wouldn't blame Andy. He was the nicest boy she ever met, the only one who would be seen with her in public. He always tried so hard, so who could fault him for finally falling? Lots of animals died when they were hunted for too long.  
  
         The girl felt the rush of blood pumping through her veins at her thoughts about Andy, bittersweet feelings overtaking her miserable despair. Tarah felt distant from Andy, but he was the closest person in her heart just the same. Though she had always managed to get by without real friends, right now she needed someone to talk to. Her hand had already started reaching for the phone before her mind had registered it, and upon finding her hand on the receiver, she completed the action and quickly brought it up to bear.  
  
         Rapidly dialing Andy's number, she brought the phone to her ear and waited, her face wrought with tension and worry. The familiar sporadic buzzing of the rings seemed to taunt her, like some otherworldly God that bore her as much ill will as her classmates. On the fourth ring, it clicked, and a warm voice came through the speakers. "Hello, this is the Champion house," it said, carrying with it a sort of clouded tiredness.  
  
         Failing to come up with the name of the speaker, Tarah bumbled through the conversation as best she could. "Is this Andrew's aunt?" she asked, bringing the phone closer to her mouth. "Can Andrew come talk?"  
  
         "Tarah, is that you?" Aunt Mary asked, sounding a bit surprised. "I think Andy's asleep, wait a moment and I'll see if I can get him." Tarah felt the bump of the phone being put down on the other end, and listened to Mary's footsteps as they drew further away. The girl waited with baited breath as she listened to the hiss of appliances and other unknown sounds from Andy's house. Fifteen seconds later, she could hear someone fumbling with the phone, and she drew closer to the receiver with desperate longing.  
  
         "....lo?" a muffled voice mumbled, sounding like a cross between an urban zombie and a broken oboe.  
  
         "Andrew?" Tarah said, her mouth perking up into a hopeful smile.  
  
         "...arah?" the boy gurbled, confusion leaking out of his voice. "Wha...what time is it…?"  
  
         "It's eleven-thirty-three O'clock," she replied, after taking a look at her bedside clock. An affirmative moan came from the speaker, and Tarah wondered if he would have to talk a bit slower for her to hear him. " Andrew...are you okay?" Tarah asked hesitantly, almost like a doctor talking to a tricky patient.  
  
         "…fine, fine," he responded, almost mechanically in his manner. "...you doing alright?"  
  
         "Oh definitely!" she cried, trying to put as much old energy into the proclamation as possible. "There's a new show on the mating ritual of the north Starlight Buzzerbugs coming up, and once I see it, I'll be able to go the uptown woods tomorrow and find some myself!"  
  
         "…Izzat so...?" Andy said, obviously trying hard to pretend he was more than a mite awake.  
  
         "Yeah," she said, her grin waning into a slightly melancholy smile on her lips. A slight silence fell between the two of them, as Tarah struggled with finding something to say. "Uh, Andrew?" she tried, the words feeling lumpy on her tongue. "I'm sorry they were teasing you at carpool..."  
  
         "..it's alright," came the response a moment later. "...wasn't your fault."  
  
         She only felt a tiny bit relieved at the fact he wasn't blaming her, but tried to bluff a positive attitude. "Okay," she said, and let out a nervous giggle. Andy laughed along with her, a kind gesture that only he would show. Tarah felt like crying.  
  
         The silence picked up again, and Tarah found she had nothing left to say. "Uh, I better go now," she spoke up somewhat awkwardly. "Let's talk some more in school tomorrow, okay?"  
  
         "'…kay," Andy affirmed, and Tarah could hear him stifling a yawn.  
  
         "Goodnight, Andrew," she told him, her voice radiating with hidden warmth.  
  
         "'Night." he mumbled.  
  
         After she heard the click of the line being disconnected, Tarah fell backwards on the bed, emotionally drained. Her mouth formed into a pained, wavering line, and her eyes overflowed with her exhausted sentiments. A single tear escaped and trailed a path down her cheek and along her chin. "Sweet dreams, Andrew," she whispered, though only the lizards in their case were around to hear her.  
  
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Next Up- Part 2


	8. Different and Cool: Love's a Polygon (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two weeks later, Tarah confronts Andy and Mari.

  
D&C  
  
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*****  
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         Two weeks passed, and things remained stagnant between Andy and Tarah. Although he always made time for her, Tarah was finding it more and more difficult to approach him with anything serious, and it seemed the reverse was also true. Their conversations were losing the friendly awkwardness of two different souls trying to know one another and began to drift into a dull monotony. Neither seemed willing to talk honest and real, and both parties opted to change the conversation to something more frivolous.  
  
         For Tarah, there was always the matter of Andy and Mari hanging over her head. Although Andy had yet to mention it, Tarah knew he was continuing to see Mari in the afternoons. Every time she looked at the sporting girl, she got lost in trying to compare that perfect, flaming mane to her own scraggly locks. Her mind slowly started to create the image of a voluptuous, unbeatable rival, even though Mari's beauty was still nothing that couldn't be found in any middle school.  
  
         It wasn't too long before the frustration began eating away at her from the inside out. Within her fragile heart, bitterness of the like she had never felt before was forming, splashing like molten lava against a metaphorical dam. Her emotions were a tsunami coasting ever closer to the continental city.  
  
         On Tuesday of the next week, it broke onto the mainland.  
  
         It happened in the science lab, sometime after lunch. Tarah and Mari were set up at one of the long tables, trying to curb Mari's incredible ineptitude at biology. Though it was well known that she was as sharp as a whip, the onslaught of scientific names against ambiguous body parts transformed the green-haired lass without fail into the ultimate teenage ditz. And it was clear by the deadpan expression on Tarah's face that she had little tolerance for her erstwhile charge today.  
  
         "Uh, could you run that by me again," Mari was asking sheepishly, putting a hand to the back of her head.  
  
         Tarah didn't spare her a glance from the textbook. "I said that frogs are members of the order Anura, along with toads," she explained, a crisp chill in her voice.  
  
         "I thought that was the order Caudata," Mari said.  
  
         "No!" Tarah suddenly shouted, slamming her fists against the textbook and wrinkling the pages. "Why can't you understand!? Even an elementary student knows the difference between Anura and Caudata! Caudata is salamanders, newts, and mudpuppies!"  
  
         Mari was a bit taken aback by the outburst, but quickly settled into a sour pout. "Well, some of us aren't perfect at biology, you know..." she grumbled under her hissing breath.  
  
         "You're not even trying!" the bespectacled girl continued, waving her arms around like whips. "You don't care about biology at all! You just want to pass the class so you can continue being on top of everything else!"  
  
         "What!?" Now Mari was rearing back into her chair, completely astonished by her tutor's tirade.  
  
         "You don't think you need to work at anything!" Tarah screamed at her, falling further and further into hysterics. "You have looks, friends, the top spot on the basketball team, and it all comes easy! I bet you're going to grow up to have an easy life with Andrew Champion and be some fashion person wearing animal furs!"  
  
         "Hey, I work hard at everything I do!" Mari snapped back, her own righteous aura burning in her eyes. "What does Andy have to do with anything? What on earth is wrong with you?!"  
  
         "Everything!!" the other girl shrieked, practically at the top of her lungs.  
  
         Whichever question of Mari's she was answering, it didn't matter, for she was slamming the textbooks shut and gathering them up. Tarah's entire body was shaking with anger as she propped everything in her arms, the bug jars almost toppling onto the floor in the process. She stamped her way to the open door, where a number of students were cluing in to the classroom commotion. "Go figure out the order Anura by yourself!" she hollered out behind her, and broke through the wall of kids to the outside hallway.  
  
         "Tarah!" Mari called out to the retreating girl, who had by now already made it halfway to the cafeteria.  
  
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*****  
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         The cold chill of early December was amplified by the cutting winds coasting through the streets, jet fighter-style. It poked and prickled through Tarah's skin like the worst wave of hornets, the ones that wouldn't give up until they had made you pay for disturbing their hive. She readjusted her winter scarf, pulling it closer around her neck so that it nearly covered her mouth, then pulled on the sleeves of her jacket. Breathing short, gasping breaths, she had the look of rookie soldiers sent out for their first battle; hating their job, but deeming it necessary.  
  
         Though Tarah was known to be clueless sometimes, she knew she had totally blown it with Mari. The harsh realization of her actions came a scant fifteen minutes later, when she had finally stopped shaking from emotional overload to take a look around her to see Mari shuffling by with a look of utter perplexity. She wished she could've said she couldn't help it, that watching her get everything and Andy too was unbearable. But a few weeks with a friend like Andy had taught her you could always help it, and also, if anyone deserved the best from life, it was Mari.  
  
         "Maybe I could apologize to her," she reasoned quietly.  
  
         If there was any similarity between the friends Andy and Tarah, it was their strong sense of closure. She couldn't go on like this anymore. She had to find out for sure what was going on between her friend and Mari. And if the two had really shut her out...then she would...  
  
         "Don't cry..." the pigtailed girl told herself, leaking tears like sweating glassware. "Don't cry don't cry!" She smiled through her tears and shook her head, making small noises from the back of her throat. The ugly feeling deep inside her was submerged once again, leaving her with a look of determination. She stared defiantly at the gargantuan edifice that dwarfed her, and patted the backpack behind her, just to assure herself that her science books and butterfly photos were coming with her.  
  
         Tarah was back in the downtown work area once again, the oncoming dusk hanging over the buildings like an omen shadow. The workmen had departed for the moment, perhaps a sign that they weren't taking their job very seriously, for little progress had been made in the 2+ weeks since she had been here last. The planetarium was in front of her, a cold, permanent monolith that might as well have been from a dead civilization for all the spookiness it emanated. It beckoned unto her.  
  
         Tarah stared with subdued intimidation, trying to fight off the feeling of dread welling up within her. Then, with a deep breath, she gripped the straps of her backpack and headed towards the glass double doors, forcing herself to open them up and push herself inside.  
  
         The light inside the planetarium was dim, and Tarah stumbled for awhile before her bad eyes adjusted to the light. Once she could make out the general layout of the entrance hall, she started making her way in deeper, her bangs battling against her head rapidly due to a rather strong air conditioning unit. It seems Mari had never bothered to take off the posters, as the walls were littered with notices about the time of the next show. She did, however, add the homey touch of incense candles on any available ledges; for Tarah, the effect was rather intoxicating instead of homey.  
  
         The most interesting point concerning the planetarium was the fact that Maru Mari actually lived there. Through special government permission, Mari was allowed to refurbish the former science exhibit and make it her home, together with her guardian, an old woman who ran the dry cleaners next door. Mari had managed to convince everyone that she and her "nana" were perfectly safe. It did lead to a lot of odd rumors floating about, such as the one saying that she slept in a hollowed-out replica of the earth twenty feet above the floor.  
  
         Tarah's pace quickened, her impatience changing to courage in the bright firelight. She sidestepped a large box full of dried foods, and proceeded past a retro arcade machine to a dramatic bend in the architecture, which seemed to lead to the main exhibit. She could hear faint huffing noises coming from within, a sure sign that Andy had once again joined his newer-new friend for whatever that they did in there.  
  
         Even considering what the trio's relationship with each other would be after this encounter, the thought of being able to make peace with the both of them eased Tarah's heart, and she was able to take the final steps into the planetarium exhibit, right into the view of Andy and Mari.  
  
         The seats that would normally be covering the bulk of the exhibit's floor had been cleared out long ago, leaving scant but the projector in the middle and a small refrigerator off against the wall. The models that made up the pretend solar system were still suspended up above by steel wires, and Tarah briefly ran her gaze over a carved up model of the earth containing a blanket and pillow. Her eyes were largely ignoring the spectacle of the planetarium though and were instead focused primarily on the two teens staring fish-eyed at her. Andy and Mari had both stopped what they were doing and turned to gawk at the pigtailed intruder.  
  
         "Tarah?" Mari began curiously, all traces of her previous anger vanquished. "What are you doing here?"  
  
         "Tarah?" Andy, too, was looking at her, his own expression more concerned than curious.  
  
         Tarah stared at her feet for a moment, but quickly regained her unsteady confidence. "I kinda...wanted to apologize for the stuff I said during tutoring," she said quietly. "I'm sorry, and I don't mean to get in the way." She looked straight at them, smiling bittersweetly as the tears welled up. "If you two want to be friends without me, then I won't bother you. You can ignore me again, and be strangers like we used to be." She sniffed slightly, and wiping at her eyes, slumping her shoulders down in surrender.  
  
         Andy was staring at her in complete bafflement, his eyebrow cocking like a six-shot revolver. "Tarah, what are you talking about?" he asked her, and slowly started walking towards her as if drawn to her distress like a magnet.  
  
         "I think Tarah's stumbled upon our secret game," Mari said, the bill of her cap shadowing half her face. Tarah blinked a few times, trying to comprehend what had just changed in the large planetarium. Mari had stopped his approach with a hand to his chest, her entire attitude radiating the cockiness of someone who always knew (and got) what they wanted. And when she raised her head to reveal her eyes, both the pigtailed girl and Andy were shocked to find they were filled with passion and a scalding heat. "You know, our game...?"  
  
         "H-huh....?" the boy looked at her like she was a predator, and slowly started easing away from that dangerous animal.  
  
         "Don't be shy, bad boy," Mari cooed rapturously, striding up to him and smiling like the cat who caught the canary. "We play it all day long...and sometimes, into the night..." Upon the word 'night,' she stroked her index finger up the center of Andy's chest, getting a babbling gurgle from him in the process.  
  
         Tarah's eyes nearly broke through the thick frames surrounding them. She knew it was going to be bad, but she didn't expect this. And yet she couldn't look away; like a deer caught in headlights she mindlessly stared at the amorous couple, hoping somehow this interaction would turn out to be something, anything, other than what it appeared to be.  
  
         "Why don't we show Tarah what we get up to?" Mari continued, sliding her hand up to clasp his chin. "We'll take it nice and slow today."  
  
         "Gu-goo…?" Andy burbled, wrinkling his nose in a manner Tarah would've found endearing, if he hadn't been doing it in response to this basketball-playing bombshell.  
  
         "Yes," Mari patronized, like someone talking to an adoring servant. "First we get real close..." She moved forward and cradled his face.  
  
         "...and then we go down HARD!!!" and suddenly she threw a titanic punch straight towards Andy's nose, which the boy was only able to grab by a split-second margin. Tarah gasped.  
  
         The athletic girl wasn't done yet, though. She pivoted on her heel, and spun into a backfist that would get her at least a supporting role in a martial arts motion picture. He stepped back and raised his forearm to block the blow, and moved the other arm to deflect two kicks flying towards his left side. The next attacks were better off dodged, as he tried to create a little distance between Mari's hooks and his face. Andy had to move faster and faster to avoid the strikes, and she only continued to up the ante with ruthless right crosses and hellish heel kicks.  
  
         Tarah watched with stunned amazement as the two continued their very unromantic dance as a flying dervish of death, the planetarium becoming the perfect makeshift arena. Her first impulse was of course to help Andy defend himself against this surprising new enemy, but wasn't quite sure if it was warranted yet. Though he was still largely on the defense, he was having no trouble keeping up with Mari in the short run. He wasn't exactly two steps ahead, but with every blow, Tarah could see him get more and more comfortable at being swung at; his cool expression testified to that.  
  
         Andy had worked up a rhythm with his combat, systematically raising and lowering his arms to deflect each successive blow. Punches came at a steady from his opponent, but his sharpened eyes saw them all, and he was able to respond accordingly. A set of spin kicks were deftly avoided by the agile boy, resulting in Mari being slightly off balance. Andy’s battle scowl set in, and he pounced on this momentary opening, becoming like a lighting bolt as he moved in for the kill. "HAIII!!!!"  
  
         CLAT! Mari's face registered surprise as she was just able to halt Andy's punch, his knuckles about an inch from her nose in a startling reversal of her initial attack. They stayed like this for a more moment, frozen in a pose of heated battle. For a moment, the only thing that could be heard was the muttering air conditioning unit and their own labored breaths.  
  
         And Mari smiled winsomely. "I guess it wasn't so nice and slow after all," she commented, her eyebrows resting in an easygoing position.  
  
         Andy grinned, his face bearing the confidence of someone with twice his years and experience. The two backed out of their fighting poses and bowed to each other, making sure to look each other in the eye. Tarah stared at them blank-faced for a moment, her glasses sliding down on the left side so they were crooked on her face. Then, with a small "ooh," she started clapping, like she had just witnessed a stage show by a traveling theater group.  
  
         Mari turned to her and beamed. "It's the Double Helix Style," she explained, her sex-pot routine abandoned. "Something I work on to keep prepared for life's mishaps. I've been teaching it to Andy for a couple weeks now, that and a couple other things to get him toughened up. He's a marshmallow, but I think training's going pretty well for the most part."  
  
         Completely blindsided by this information, Tarah's jaw went slack. "T-training?" she stammered, her hip hanging down.  
  
         Mari nodded. "Andy came over one day talking about those jerks at school, saying he wanted to become stronger inside and out. I thought up a little martial arts regiment for him." As the professor of this little group, she started making motions familiar to any student who's had a serious teacher. "Martial arts condition the mind and soul, tells you how to think, who to fight, and when to just let go. Andy's a serious guy, and he said he could use my stuff to start a new lifestyle."  
  
         Feeling like she was hit with everything at once, Tarah fell to her knees dumbfounded. Her mind was scrambled, trying to make sense of their situation. Whatever it was, it wasn't a romantic rendezvous, at least not from Mari's viewpoint. Tarah felt like an idiot.  
  
         And it seemed Andy was rather feeling that way about himself. He was looking at the ground with a socially clumsy expression on his face, scratching at the back of his head in a way that Tarah has learned was a reflexive habit of his. Who could blame him; no one but Mari had handled this situation the way they should have. Too many secrets, little communication, standard problem.  
  
         Mari's smile was serene, bursting with fondness for the younger teens. "I'll leave you guys alone," she said, turning around and looking over her shoulder. And with a toss of her forest locks, she flounced out of the exhibit to another part of the planetarium. Leaving the two ashamed kids to stare at the ground and bask in their mutual stupidity.  
  
         They remained separated for a moment more, with Tarah still on her knees and Andy shuffling on one foot like a naughty grade school boy. Then, he started walking over to his estranged friend, his eyes still focused on the floor. Slowly, he lowered himself down on the ground next to the girl, with his knees tucked and his hand massaging his chin thoughtfully. She tilted her head to peek at his eyes, and found them to be uncertain, but strikingly fierce all the same.  
  
         "I needed to get stronger," he started, still not daring to look at her own eyes. "I was still so concerned about what other people thought of me, what they thought of us. I was afraid I wouldn't be a good enough friend for you, and you deserved better than some…social coward. So I asked Mari for help, the only one at school that I knew wasn’t afraid of anything."  
  
         Tarah hesitated for a moment, struggling to take all of it in. "But Andrew, what about the martial arts?" she asked, leaning a bit closer to him.  
  
         Andy's expression darkened. "That was something else I needed," he muttered, the hiss not directed at Tarah but coming out all the same. He stopped there, and the girl could tell he was steeling himself for something earthshaking; Tarah's heart quivered. "I really didn't want you to make you feel bad about all this, but I guess there's no use hiding it now. Things were getting bad, and I needed a weapon. I’ve already used it once..."  
  
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*****  
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         PWAK! Andy reared from the backhand slap, his teeth clenched and ready to support a vicious growl. He spit out a glob of flood that had secreted from a wound in the inside of his mouth, and glared defiantly at his oppressor. Struggling fiercely, he attempted to break free and exact justice for his slight, but the arms of the bigger, badder boys held him tightly against the brick wall of the school. They only laughed as his efforts, confident in their numeral advantage over the sea-maned boy.  
  
         "How 'bout it, Dork King?" Justin sneered viciously, his lips curled into a twisted U shape. "Terrible Tarah's bug-loving getting you props now? No." He answered for him. "What it gets you is a load of trouble, a nice spot on the bullet-train for dweebs. Right, Slick?" The boy threw the last remark over his shoulder, grinning wildly.  
  
         Slick said nothing, but continued to study the insects in the grass, as if he were a Dork King himself.  
  
         Andy's gaze lowered, his eyes settling into an amalgam of hate and fear. He was outnumbered 5 to 1, against Justin, Slick, the boys holding his arms, and one more cackling jock to Justin's right. He could the pulse in his arms fluctuate, due to the steady grip restraining them. He was hard pressed to find a time that he was in more trouble.  
  
         And yet, he could already feel the coldness start to set in. The chill that was less like glacier water and more like ice-fire, flickering as a blazing knife deep in his heart. He could feel himself lulling into a deceptive calm, so much so that the two boys relaxed their hold on him a bit. All the better, he thought to himself, closing his eyes and making himself at peace with his inner violence.  
  
         "We're only breaking you in, Champion," Justin said with pinpoint reason. "The ones in charge always control the fate of the insects." He laughed, the three jocks laughed, and Slick made a small grumbling noise that sounded like a car engine puttering out.  
  
         Andy just relaxed and swayed with the two boys holding him, trying to adjust to their bodily rhythms as much as possible.  
  
         Then, he suddenly slammed his feet hard against his captors' shins, making them roar in pain and surprise. Taking advantage of their shock, he effortlessly slid his arms out of their grip and swirled around to face them head on. As the ultimate opportunist, he drove his fist into the left-hand jock's gut, and stepped forward to deliver a hard boot to the right-hand jock's crotch, making them both double over in pain, the right-hand jock quickly curling into the fetal position. Taking only a small breath to see him through, Andy turned his hot-lead gaze toward the third nameless jock, and swooped upon him like an injured attack dog.  
  
         Slick backed away a few steps as Andy and the third jock wrapped themselves up in the tendons of battle, with the third jock taking the first swing. The green-maned lion coldly deflected the blow, and smash a right-cross along his opponent's jawline, sending him spinning into the shrubbery. He then focused on Justin, who had been too stunned to react at all, and subjected him to a hard knee strike, knocking the air out of him. Justin choked out a gasp of astonished anger, and fell over to join his buddies on the ground in agony.  
  
         Andy looked wildly around him, searching for anyone else that wanted to cause him harm today. The four boys he had dealt with were still dazed by their hard knocks, and Slick was raising his hands up, letting Andy know he wanted no part in the fight. Justin was just starting to recover, and he glared with unrestrained hatred at his benefactor of bruises. Andy stared right back with equal animosity, the look in his eyes stating that he would have no qualms about making more trouble if provoked.  
  
         Then, something in the sea-haired boy's manner changed, perhaps in tune with the groans he heard coming from the fallen jocks. His eyes regained their gentle sheen, and for a moment, a flash of shame could be seen swimming through his irises. He blinked his eyes, and rearranged his death-ice demeanor into a frosty, businesslike grit. "Don't press me," he told Justin, as if he were telling him to avoid walking in the rain without an umbrella.  
  
         Then, he took off running, moving like a madman to the safer areas at the front of the school. He didn't stop running until he saw a teacher, and barely heard Justin's enraged scream: "I'll get you for that! You can't run and hide forever, bastard!!"  
  
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*****  
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         The atmosphere in the planetarium has changed slightly, and it wasn't just the air conditioning turning off. It felt more like late January than early December, with more of that overpowering sense of death without rebirth. The entire exhibit was quieter than an empty concert hall, with about the same amount of echo effect. The two could hear Mari walking about on the other side of the complex, though she must've been at least a few rooms away.  
  
         Tarah stared at the boy almost like he was a completely different person. He might as well have been, for though his eyes were closed, his expression was unrepentant. He'd go through it all again, do it all again, continue throwing himself over and over again into the fires of Tatarus until he came out with Hades head on a pike. He was like a seasoned soldier, one that had seen the fires of violence and could only shove himself back into the blaze out of a inescapable sense of duty.  
  
         A soldier was it exactly. Andy wasn't just willing to have it a little harder than most: he was ready to go to war for Tarah. He was ready to make himself into a warrior, able to withstand the grazing arrows without flinching. He would make as many sacrifices necessary to achieve his goal, and no matter how much effort he had to put into life, he would keep marching on. No matter how much they would try to stick it to him.  
  
         She slapped him hard on the head.  
  
         "You dummy!" Tarah yelled, her voice a shrill, girlish shriek. "Why are you getting in trouble for me?!"  
  
         "Ow...!" Andy rubbing his reddening forehead in an attempt to relieve some of the sting. "Hey, what was that for?" he demanded, his voice rising above its previous low rumble.  
  
         "I never wanted you to get into fights just to be my friend!" she told him, her voice getting fast and almost petulant. "I'm not just a burden!"  
  
         "It's not about who's burdening who, Tarah!" he insisted, finally turning to look directly at her. "It's about me being able to live with myself!" Subterranean passion from deep within boiled to the surface, and Andy's personality was a burning fuse. "I'll never forget how I felt that day when I tossed your notepad, or your tears! I won't forget that, and I won't give up on you!"  
  
         "Then don't give up on me!" she shot back, meeting him glare for glare. "But I want to help you too!" Her own flooding feelings were starting to stagnate, but she still had enough of a rush to ride the rest of the way through. "Bees need flowers and flowers need bees in order to pollinate!  It's a symbiotic relationship, and we're in a symbiotic relationship!"  
  
         Andy looked like a bucket of cold water had just been splashed over his head, and Tarah took advantage of this to let loose. "Andrew, let's tell the teacher," she continued, her tone becoming softer. "You don't have to fight, and we can just walk away if they want to bother us. We can avoid them, and everything will get better." She smiled, a fresh sign of her own personal brand of friendliness. "I won't get mad if you want to be comfortable. I'll always be your friend."  
  
         He peered strangely at her, then over to his side, suddenly pensive about the whole ordeal. And then, a slight smile curled his lip. "Well, if you say so, then I guess I can cut down on the blockhead stuff," he chuckled.  
  
         Tarah was almost laughing. "I really like my blockheaded friend Andrew!" she squealed, and threw her arms around Andy's neck. He was startled for a moment, but quickly found it within him to hug her back. It had been hard, but they had missed each other, and were just glad to be together again.  
  
         After a moment of listening to Andy's heartbeat, Tarah leaned closer until she was almost kissing his ear. "Andrew, do you like Maru Mari?" she asked in a normal voice, despite being practically molded to him.  
  
         Andy disengaged himself from her in an instant, looking around for the green-haired girl in a panic. "Yes, but don't shout it out," he whispered, as if in conspiracy.  
  
         Tarah's heart took a hit from disappointment, but could not muster up the energy to be visibly upset by it. "Oh," was all she said, looking down slightly with a blank face.  
  
         The boy's next words were a comfort to her, though. "It's nothing to think about, really," he clarified, looking gently at Tarah. "I don't have any idea how she feels about me, and I'm really just here for her training." At this, Andy put a finger to the corner of his lips, as if he had to think about that last statement. "At least I think that's why I'm here," he pondered, and Tarah felt another surge of worry jolt though her. "Well, I guess I just want to get to know both of you better," he amended, cutting it short.  
  
         Tarah felt a bit better about it, if only because he placed her on the same level as Mari. "I'm sorry I got upset," she said, smiling apologetically at him with a touch of sheepishness. "I guess Mari is pretty nice, too."  
  
         "Yeah," Andy acknowledged, resting his hand on his cheek and returning her grin.  
  
         They smiled lazily, surrounded by the heavy silhouettes of the sun and planets. Staying like that for a moment, they enjoyed their well earned respite from middle school drama. Then, Tarah turned towards Andy with renewed excitement. “So we're gonna go to Professor Clark tomorrow?” she asked eagerly, all set to get cracking.  
  
         All at once, his demeanor became that of a skittish gerbil. “Are you sure we gotta go to him?” he said quickly, as if in horror.  
  
         She leaned forward, wondering what other hidden secret he had yet to reveal.  
  
         “’Cause Professor Clark scares me,” the boy finished, also gerbil-like.  
  
         Tarah blinked.  
  
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*****  
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         "So that’s it," Andy finished up, exhaling a large breath of air from his monologue. "I thought I could handle everything myself, but I don't think I should have to. We'd really appreciate any help you can give us, sir."  
  
         Mr. Clark took his head out of his steepled hands, and sighed. "You should've come to me sooner, Andy," he reprimanded in his stern way. "Self defense it may be, but I won't tolerate violence on school grounds, and none of the other staff will either."  
  
         The two friends, Andy and Tarah, were standing in front of the teacher's desk, trying to give each other strength. Andy had wanted several times to bolt from the intimidating professor, but Tarah's hand within his was his anchor, and he remained steadfast. Bolting wasn't really called for anyway; Mr. Clark had been nothing but receptive, giving only gentle cues until they had told him the whole story. And to those that knew how the professor worked (Tarah did), they could see intense pride radiating from his mahogany features.  
  
         "I can see how much both of you want to support each other," he said, straightening his back up in his favorite hardwood chair. "All you need to do is remember that, and act accordingly. Everybody working here is here to help you, and so are your families. Andy, your aunt and uncle, and Tarah, your parents."  
  
         "As long as you're together, your strength is two-fold," he told them, a ghost of a smile threatening to break his rock-hard demeanor. "Always hold it close to your hearts, and your personal truth need not be sorrow."  
  
         Tarah turned to Andy, a big, excitable smile on her face. And he the boy could only beam back, gripping onto her fingers firmly, though he trusted her to always be there for him.  
  
\-----  
  
_Things got a lot better after that. Professor Clark threatened Justin Bishop with suspension, and Andrew hasn't had a fight since. He still gives us a lot of dirty looks for tattling, though, and we still get teased, but I don't mind too much. Anytime it gets too tough, we just leave the cafeteria and eat outside. We've had a lot of nice lunches on the grass, and I can even point out all the interesting insects that make their home there, like the Red Willowkack._  
  
_Andrew still keeps up with Mari’s martial arts training, and I guess that's okay. He's very determined on becoming as strong a person as he can, and he tells me how he feels stronger every day. I'm still a little bothered that he spends so much time with a girl, but I'm sure it'll all work out fine. Me, Andrew, and Mari, we're always spending time with each other, and I think we can all be great friends!_  
  
_Whoops, my favorite nature documentary is coming on! I better stop and use you to write down all the interesting stuff. Andrew said he'd watch it too, and I can't wait to talk to him all about it. Tomorrow’s going to be great!_  
  
_See you later! Bye!_  
  
_-Tarah_

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Next Story- Different and Cool EXTRA: The Bandanna


	9. EXTRA - The Bandanna

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andy trains with Mari.

  
**Different and Cool: The Bandanna**  
  
 **By Reid M. Haynes**  
  
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*****  
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    A chilled current coasted through the cavernous confines of the abandoned planetarium, bringing with it a sterile odor that recalled a hospital waiting room. The two combatants faced each other under the planets and stars, each bobbing about in the balanced stance of the Double Helix Style, the new martial discipline that promised equal parts attack and defense. Andy could feel the sanitized air blasting on his skin, bringing with it goosebumps and a certain fear of the unknown. Before him, Maru Mari was showing all the confidence of a top-ranked prizefighter, and her eyes shone with an eagerness he sorely lacked this afternoon training session.  
  
    "Ready, Champ?" Mari asked, her lips forming a lopsided grin.  
  
    Andy sighed, steadying himself. "As I'll ever be..."  
  
    Mari steeled herself, and then began gliding forward with swift, panther-like steps. Moving into Andy's inner circle before he had a chance to react, she opened up with a quick jab that the boy barely managed to block. Clearing some room for maneuvering, Andy prepared his defense, diverting a pair of kicks with quick movements of the forearm. Mari would not be deterred, however, and kept delivering a steady supply of punishing blows for her hapless pupil to contend with, striking out at all parts of the body.  
  
    Andy did his best to keep up with the onslaught, but was at a loss for how to respond. He tried to push in a quick combo through the spaces in Mari's attack, but the girl's defense was tantamount to invulnerable, and he was met with swift evasive tactics that never even let him come close. Mari utilized quick economical punches and tactics, never exposing her weak-points longer than she had to. Soon, she had him right where she wanted him, and launched a spinning roundhouse at Andy's head, sending him spiraling away on a rendezvous with the cold, hard floor.  
  
    Mari looked down on the prone fighter with disdain. "Jeez, Champ, again?" she complained, putting her fists on her hips. "You didn't even mount an attack this time!"  
  
    "Sorry," Andy groaned, with a touch of sarcasm as he nursed the red mark on his cheek. "I'm a little new at this."  
  
    The pretty girl sighed, tossing her long, green hair behind her back. "Andy, we've been doing this for over a hour now," she reminded him. leaning her body to one side. "Why can't you get closer to making a mark?"  
  
    The boy considered this. "I guess I'm not much of a fighter," he huffed tiredly, raising himself from the planetarium floor. "I never even thought about fighting before this stuff with Justin and Slick came up."  
    
    Mari shook her head. "You've got the skills," she pointed out with a turn of her hand. "You picked up the basics of the Double Helix style faster than anyone I've seen. But you won't commit to your strikes, and you let me control the pace of the fight. Don't be a string bean, Champ!"  
  
    "Maybe I'm just worried about fighting a girl," he said, averting his eyes with embarrassment. Not to mention fighting a girl I've got a crush on...  
  
    Mari, for her part, placed her hands on her cheeks, and started swaying back and forth like a willow in the wind. "Oh, lordie me, your big manly fists are too much!" she cooed, her voice taking on the texture of a pampered, high-society debutant. "It's ever so frightening!"  
  
    Andy scowled. "C'mon, I'm serious Mari!" he groaned, folding his arms in frustration.  
  
    Mari returned to her original posture with a comfortable shrug. "Andy, you came to me for help," she told him, fixing her eyes on his. "You gotta drop your inhibitions if you want us to get anywhere with this. What happened to the dude who came up to me and said 'hey, I wanna be a badass, and stand up for that cute little nerd thing?'"  
  
    "I think I'm still learning who that guy is." Andy tried to explain, fumbling with the right way to describe his hesitation.  
  
    The girl just smiled, and walked over to a podium that she had converted into a short dresser. After a moment, Mari returned, this time with a short length of white cloth in her hand. "You dig symbols, right?" she said, stretching out the cloth in her hand. "Here's one for ya."  
  
    Moving behind him, she placed her hands on his temples like she was reading his mind. Andy's skin prickled up at the touch of his longtime crush, but soon realized she was tying the short cloth to his forehead. "This bandanna belonged to a friend of mine," Mari said, moving aside a lock of hair so that it wouldn't get trapped underneath the headgear. "She was a tough cookie, and you can be one, too. Chocolate with nuts, even!"  
  
    "You think this will help?" Andy asked, wondering where she was going with this.  
  
    He could hear Mari grunt an affirmation behind him, as she continued tying the bandanna. "It's also endowed with the spirit of the ancient masters who devised the Double Helix style," the girl continued, her voice lowering to a sage rumble.  
  
    Andy smiled. "Really?"  
  
    "Nah, I'm just kidding!" Mari laughed easily. "It's still pretty cool, though."  
  
    With a sharp tug, she finished up the knot, leaving two tendrils flowing down the back of Andy's neck like white waterfalls. "Rock 'n' roll!" she cheered, grinning widely as she went to fetch a broken fragment of a bathroom mirror. "Not bad at all!"  
  
    As Mari brought up the mirror, Andy appraised his image with a sudden sense of awe. Coupled with his flamboyant green hair, the bandanna added a wild touch to the boy's visage, like a savage warrior heading into battle. He looked tougher, more confident, like the person he so desperately needed to be. "It looks..great!" he gasped, astonished by how well this new look suited him.  
  
    "It's just a fashion statement," Mari clucked, smiling from behind the mirror. "But I gotta admit, it's you. Whenever you feel like a wimp, just tell yourself: 'man, I look good in a bandanna!' It's all in your head, dude."  
  
    Andy closed his eyes, shaking his head. "I'm gonna be some sight going into school like this," he said, not bothering to fight the smile coming to his face.  
  
    "Hey, if Tarah can wear braids with pride, you can stand to show a little style," she stated, titling her head to the side.  
  
    The female fighter walked a few paces back, then turned back to face him. "So, you ready to get to it?" she challenged bringing up her fighting stance once more.  
  
    Andy smiled, following suit with own stance. "The question is whether you're ready, Mari," he replied, conjuring up a combo with his trainer's name on it.  
  
    "Oh ho!" Mari teased, adjusting her guard. "Gettin' sassy!"  
  
    The two young martial artists gauged each others defenses, looking for any sort of weakness to exploit. Then, Andy rushed forward with a titanic fist, emboldened with all the confidence of a champion that was going for the gold.  
  
  
  
                 END

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Next Story- Different and Cool: Look What Tarah Can Do


	10. Different and Cool Fantastic Tales: Look What Tarah Can Do (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andy goes over to Tarah's house, and stumbles into a lush fantasy world.

_In the fall of 893 After Starlight, within the alternate world of Pangaea, a boy named Andrew Champion found something special in the outcast Tarah Reichardt, and in the end accepted her friendship. Now, he'll have a chance to find just how special his new friend really is. A magical world of danger and heroics awaits him as he skydives through the rabbit hole. For the valiant can never rest, even as this journey twists and turns from Hell to Heaven._  
  
 _These are the Different and Cool Fantastic Tales._  
  
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 **Different and Cool Fantastic Tales: Look What Tarah Can Do**  
  
 **By Reid M. Haynes**  
  
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         On the mainland of Pangaea, deep within the suburbs of Starlight City, December winds shook the skeletal trees like a rough interrogation session. Fall was over, and the nights were as stark and cold as could be expected. A single brown leaf remained on a branch of an oak tree, testament to the season of beautiful dying. That leaf, too, snapped off from the branch and wafted to the concrete below, soon to be crushed underfoot by the lone boy wandering through the streets.  
  
         Andy walked along the sidewalk at a brisk pace, as if trying to keep one step ahead of the frigid wind. His brown jacket was his only guardian against the gusts, buffeting him against the brunt of the areo assault. Strangely, his hands were not gloved nor were they in his pockets, but were instead throwing shadow punches that whipped and shredded the air. His manner was very much that of someone who had just seen a particularly exciting martial-arts flick; the white bandanna he wore below his sea-green bangs could be an indication of this.  
  
         In actually, the reality was a bit more exciting.  
  
         Andy worked the ball joint in his shoulder with wide, circular movements of his arm, trying to recover from the stretching and yanking he had been doing to it a scant twenty minutes ago. His latest martial-arts workout with Mari had pressed him a bit further than previous session, and the long walk home was again the sour, overly-ripened cherry on top. It was almost as if his instructor was one of those die-hard mutants from the infomercials that trained on five different machines a day.  
  
         In any case, he felt good. Andy smiled and exhaled a soft breath through his nose, which quickly turned to fog in the chilled air. This past month, Mari had shown extraordinary support for an awkward kid who wasn't even on the peripheral of her social circle, all because he had asked for her help. Her words to him today had shown him where she stood.  
  
         "Hey, it's no problem Andy!" she had told him, with the confident, playful smile he had begun to associate with her. "I'm been looking for something worthwhile to do with my time, and I don't care what people think of me hangin' with you guys."  
  
         The second one of those "guys" was Tarah, his other new friend. Their relationship was still like a blast of ice water to Andy; only a few months ago he had avoided the girl like she was the bubonic plague, and now he was walking over to her house right now to hang out. He hadn't even bothered to call, but had just set out knowing he would be received with open arms by her family. It was something he finally learned to expect from Tarah: appreciation, for being there and being himself.  
  
         Turning the corner, Andy arrived at Mimic Drive, where Tarah's residence was. The houses that aligned either side of the road were mostly one-story jobs, with huge backyards filled with trees and underbrush. His mind wondered on whether the Reichardts had chosen this neighborhood for their daughter's benefit. Tarah had once told him that her folks had done a lot of moving before coming here two years ago, so he hoped this eco-lover's dream of a subdivision meant that they was ready to give her a permanent home; there was still so much he had to learn about her.  
  
         A slight glare blasted Andy's eyes, and he shaded his faceto safely view its source. One baby ash tree was shining with what looked like holiday lights, and he realized a moment later that it was in Tarah's front yard. It must've been her mother or father that had decorated it, since Tarah would've thought the tree was beautiful as is. Still, he had to admit: it gave the leafless tree some character.  
  
         But as he proceeded towards Tarah's house, he began to rethink his assessment that the lights were those that came on strings. Not only were there no electrical cords, but each one seemed to be moving by its own power. All of them were spherical in shape, soft green, and seemed to be made of cloud-dust. They hovered around the tree like pixies inhabiting a sacred grove, never straying too far from their focal point.  
  
         Fireflies? Andy raised an eyebrow in confusion.  
  
         He slowly proceeded towards the tree, his eyes slowly following the sprite-like entities' patterns. Tarah never hesitated to tell him of her interest in bugs, and he wondered if, somehow, he could deduce what they were from memory. It was difficult, since the bright glow they emitted completely concealed their bodies, assuming these mystery lights had bodies. A weird, surreal feeling was growing in Andy's gut, and he was starting to wonder if reality had left his port for a land far away.  
  
         His apprehension didn't keep him from noting the beauty of the scene. It was like he was living a scene from a cartoon movie, where the animators would struggle to capture a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon. And the tree, truly, didn't need holiday lights after all; in a way, it had the same gentle pride that Tarah herself possessed, as he had learned over the past month. He felt his worries face away with the soothing atmosphere of the scene and put his hand on the tree's trunk as if giving it his approval.  
  
         A ripping sensation clawed at Andy's heart, and his entire being felt like it had been grasped by a titan. "W-whaaat...?!" he stammered out, the word sounding less like it was being spoken and more like it was being pitched into an abyss. His lungs were sucked of the air that sustained his being, and he felt his world blacken around him.  
  
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*****  
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         Andy's next sensation was the hard impact of a face-first fall on cold earth. He felt the rough taste of dirt in his mouth, its unsavory flavor coating his tongue like a second skin. He sputtered a bit, spewing large globs of spit in an effort to expel the dirt from his mouth. Like a blind grub, he wallowed on the ground, trying to bring himself to his feet again.  
  
         Then, he felt his balance shift as he tumbled back over on his side, and tumbled again. He was rolling, rolling, as if a barrel on a steep incline. The somewhat painful experience ended a few seconds later with Andy at a lower altitude and dealing with groaning bones and muscles. He felt like he had just woken up late on a school day...by someone pulling up the mattress and dumping him on the floor.  
  
         He moaned, letting the pain pulse through his being, bringing a second sensation of relief in its wake. His senses were starting to flare up, and he exhaled a small breath, trying to get adjusted. A bright, yellow light was beating down on him, and he felt warm, June warm. He could feel a few insects run though the openings in his clothes, their feelers tickling and irritating his skin.  
  
         He didn't rush to wipe the bugs off his body. In fact, up until this moment, his eyes had been closed, and closed hard. Deep inside himself, he knew that he wasn't going to be looking at Tarah's lawn when he decided to accept the reality of his situation and look upon the world. He could feel the truth beckoning him like a train wreck, and like all present to a train wreck, his inclination to view it overtook all other instincts.  
  
         The first thing Andy saw before him was a brilliant blue sky, covered with an outcropping of snow-white cumulus. Birds of the like he'd seven seen fluttered overhead, sporting large beaks and a rainbow of feathers. He could see the treetops forming a canopy in the corner of his vision, along with a few large red objects that he couldn't quite define. He realized that he would need to stand in order to get a better view, and as he did so, he mentally prepared himself for any shocks that his surroundings might cause him.  
  
         What needs to be described here could be called a forest, or perhaps an oversized lawn that had never been cut. Everything about his surroundings existed in an exaggerated state. Small fungi common to Starlight City suburbs were present here at ten times their unusual size; the red objects he noted earlier turned out to be a even larger variety of 'shroom. All kinds of botanical life was within sight, some of which did not co-exist in the same season.  
  
         The trees were all gigantic, like the century old oaks one one finds every now and again, only with dozens of them within eyesight, competing for his attention. Strange animal noises could be heard coming from the depths of the forest, a great deal of them unfamiliar. A small brook to his right added a bit of tranquility to the setting, the one thing relatively normal about his surroundings. Nevertheless, the whole thing came across as a belabored artist's drug-induced idea of nature, and it was sensory overload for Andrew Champion.  
  
         The boy's heart-rate was through the roof, and his green mane flared like fire as he turned this way and that in a panic. What had happened? How did he get here, and what was here exactly? Was he asleep now? Did someone slip him something?  
  
         Calm down, a sharp voice from his rational half interjected, like the banging of a gavel in the rowdy courtroom of his consciousness. He responded quickly to this and willed his body to stop shaking, quietly reminding himself that he was not in any immediate danger. He grit his teeth and sucked in air through the gaps, feeling his heartbeat slow to a more regular rhythm. And, through the special training that Mari had given him, he began to methodically prepare himself for the upcoming trials.  
  
         Okay, it's obvious this isn't Starlight City, he told himself slowly, closing his eyes to free himself of the exotic imagery. The last thing I remember is walking up to the ash tree in Tarah's yard, and then...all this. I need to find out where I am, and for that, I need to find someone to tell me. A signpost, a map, anyone or anything that speaks my language, it's all good right now.  
  
         Andy felt his determination grow, a calling for the quest settling deeper than the fear in his heart. His hands went to the bandanna that still covered his forehead, the familiarity of the cloth between his fingers comforting. This bandanna is the symbol of my personal accomplishments. It's my sign that I can handle what Destiny throws at me, and throw it back. If something strange is happening to me, then I have to be strange myself.  
  
         He reached for the twin tendrils of his bandanna, which hung loosely in the warm, June-like weather. With two hands, he tightened the bandanna around his forehead, and his eyes opened once more to his unusual new setting, this time with courage.  
  
         With his mind set, he began walking.  
  
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*****  
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         A hour or so ran by, and the sun had moved to the three o'clock position behind a few clouds, making the light and heat more bearable. Time seemed to pass normally in this realm (Andy had been referring to this place in his head as a "realm"), even if nothing else was normal about this place. The jungle-like canopies generally kept things cool under their gentle shade, and there was also a small amount of dew left over from the night before. Once you got used to the gigantic man-eating plants that popped up every now and again, it was quite the pleasant place.  
  
         Andy wiped a bead of sweat from his head as he trudged up another small hill between more gargantuan oaks. Though he had managed to find a relatively walkable pathway through the mysterious forest, he found he had to periodically swipe foliage out of the way. Aiding him in this manner was a fallen tree branch that currently substituted as a staff. Whatever bizarre creatures that inhabited the forest had not yet revealed themselves, but he could always hear the noises, and thusly felt more secure with some sort of weapon.  
  
         His spirits were relatively high, given the circumstances. It was nice and warm here, warm enough to prompt Andy to take off his winter jacket and tie it around his waist to keep from sweating. The fresh air revitalized him, and he now felt like the main character of an adventure story. As he grew more comfortable with his surroundings, he took the time to examine his surroundings more closely, picking out any oddity he could find.  
  
         Of which there were many.  
  
         Those of note:  
  
         Flowers with bud that continually opened and closed in rhythm. Each time they opened, they made a small musical chirp, and since each flower opened at a different set time, they managed to create quite a little tune for themselves.  
  
         Long, vine-like growths that hung and perhaps even grew high up in the treetops. Upon closer examination, they were not actually vines, for at the end of each was a small tulip-like bud that indicated it was another strange type of flower.  
  
         Again, giant man-eating plants. Open maws big enough to fit a human up to his or her hips, and with "incisors" sharp enough to chomp that human down to size (he steered clear of those).  
  
         Large, rocky monoliths covered with moss. Certainly not strange in of itself, but there was the fact that they seemed to somehow be moving very slightly.  
  
         There was another thing odd about the mobile boulders. Andy scrambled over some bushes, and then carefully edged up to one of the boulders to examine the etchings in the rock face. There were some crude pictures of plants and animals, obviously those native to this realm, judging by their unfamiliarity. There was also a small, smiling stick figure, carrying what seemed to be a staff in its hand, with a crude speech balloon above it encasing the words: "PLANTS ARE OUR FRIENDS!"  
  
         So there's at least one person here. Andy smiled with satisfaction. I'll find this person.  
  
         He quickly turned away to set about on his journey again, but then on a sudden thought whirled back to the boulder. The unabashed, earnest attitude coming from the stick figure's message had struck something inside of Andy, and he appraised the drawing more carefully, a wild hunch forming in the recesses of his mind. Yes, there wasn't a doubt. That stick figure has glasses, twin pigtails, and a unmistakable passion for nature that he could help but find charming.  
  
         Then this means...  
  
         Any revelations that Andy was going through were cut short by the menacing growl coming from his rear. He turned around, and felt the color drain from his face as he caught sight of the first animal to reveal itself to him, standing outside of a thicket like it had always been there. It had the body of a tiger, but its stripes were green and brown, and it bore a snake's head in place of the standard feline mug. To add just the right touch of fearful oddity, its tail was a snake as well, hissing and snapping like live wire.  
  
         A chimera of a creation, apparently brought in just to give out a violent death. Sent from Hell, perhaps?  
  
         Andy followed his first impulse immediately, and took off for a dense cluster of trees to his right. Looking behind him, he could already tell the action was pointless, for though the beast was still a ways off, it has ample confidence in ability to catch its prey. It moved at a steady pace, obviously not wanting to overexert itself for what it thought was an easy meal. It hissed calmly through its fangs, licking its lips with blood-hunger.  
  
         Andy felt a terrible frustration building up within him, tearing apart any memory of his once-chipper attitude. Just one second after finding a clue to all this, his life was to be fodder for some monster. He felt his hand tighten around his makeshift staff, still held firmly in hand. All of a sudden, he just stopped and turned to face the creature, mentally turning it from an unstoppable force into his sworn opponent.  
  
         "You hungry, friend?" he yelled at the beast, as if trying to dampen its spirit with his barbed tongue. "I'll make you choke on that appetite!!" Feeling more and more ridiculous by the second, he decided to throw all pride to the wind and adopted a mock martial-arts pose with his weapon. "Ho-choi!"  
  
         Andrew Champion. Died in cheesy martial-arts fight with fantasy demon. A very fitting epitaph, he supposed.  
  
         And that's when he caught a small blur, undefinable in shape, streaking from the lower branches of the oak trees. It started out moving from branch to branch, then moved onto the side of a large trunk, spring off that to another branch, and started sliding down the tree. This shape, now recognizable as a very familiar young girl, moved with the sharp grace of a stuntman in a martial-arts flick, with all the acrobatics that it entails. It reached the bottom of the tree at an almost inhuman pace, and sprung off it to perform a upside-down mid-air corkscrew, spinning upright to land in between the beast and Andy, with bent knees and an outstretched palm at the beast to keep it at bay.  
  
         Tarah's expression was as serious as Andy had ever seen, and yet there was a certain serenity to her manner, not unlike Mari's zen when she practiced her Double Helix Style. She neither retreated nor advanced on the beast, but kept her curiously calm eyes trained on the beast, straightening up with a subtle pride. He had trained under the Double Helix style long enough to pick up on the distinct signs of competence and technique in the girl's posture. She was a martial artist, and maybe more than that.  
  
         What she did next wasn't an exhibition of martial skill, but perhaps an indicator of the "maybe more." Slowly, she moved toward the beast, and her outstretched arm slackened a bit. Losing the sense of urgency, a small smile appeared on Tarah's lips, gentle and sympathetic. To Andy's shock, she went right up to the beast and put its hand on its cobra-like crest, and he felt at a loss at what to do.  
  
         No screaming or shouting was necessary for Tarah to avoid danger, as the situation had quickly gone from tense to surreal. Tarah was gently talking to the beast with closed eyes, and it nodded its head as if in understanding. Both their eyes were closed, and they appeared to share a certain synchronization, like a psychic mind meld. And then the beast opened its eyes, turned around, and slowly started walking back into the thicket, its camouflage allowing it to quickly become unnoticeable in the expansive forest.  
  
         Andy stared with astonishment at his friend, who seemed to be a amalgam of the familiar and extraordinary. The worry that she had obviously bottled up was now surfacing, and she was taking some rather large heaving, breaths. The boy walked up to her, dropping his stick on the ground. "Tarah?" he said, his face curling up in confusion.  
  
         She turned to him, her expression unreadable. "Andrew, what are you doing here?" she asked him, staring with large, protuberant eyes.  
  
         Tarah was dressed in a tank top and a pair of khaki cargo shorts; he had sometimes seen her in this getup when she had gotten through tracking bugs. However, there was a few notable additions to her ensemble. Strapped to her back via a sling was a long green staff of sorts, and her left wrist was adorned with a long, coiled vine that wrapped around like a bracer. Though his friend was known to accessorize strangely, Andy wondered if these items had some sort of special use in this realm.  
  
         He had taken too long to respond, and Tarah was walking up to him, a strange urgency in her manner. "Andrew, you can't tell anybody about this place," she said, gripping the front of his shirt. "It's a secret to everybody! Please Andrew, you can't tell anybody about this place!" She was getting frantic, speaking faster and faster, her eyes filled with some unrevealed fear. "Don't tell!"  
  
         "Okay, okay!" Andy broke in to keep her form hyperventilating. "I won't tell." Tarah's breaths were short and shallow; Andy had no idea what could scare a fearless girl like her. On sudden impulse, he placed his hands on her shoulders to steady her shaking frame. "I won't tell anyone, Tarah," he told her, trying to put her worries to rest.  
  
         Tarah blinked a few times, her breathing slowing down to a more regular pace. Then, she smiled. "Okay, I believe you," she said.  
  
         Andy stared into her honest eyes, and couldn't fight the blush coming to his cheeks. The trust he had won from Tarah had a way of embarrasing him sometimes. He broke away from her and coughed a few times in his hand. "Uh Tarah, what is this place exactly?" he asked her, peeking at her from the corner of his eye.  
  
         "This is Broodring," she said, smiling pleasantly at him. "It's the birth point and distributing center for all mana energy in the world."  
  
         "...huh?" The previous statement struck Andy with the same clarity as a koala quacking, and he didn't get much out of it other than the name of this strange locale. "Birth point...what?"  
  
         "The birth point of all mana energy in the world," she repeated. "Come on Andrew, it's Chapter 7 of Rizenfort's Big Book of Nature Mythology! I thought everybody knew about mana distribution!"  
  
         "Uh, I only skimmed it at the bookstore," he said, turning away and rubbing the back of his hair. A part of Andy still grounded in his world of Pangaea wanted to point out the significance of the word "mythology" to Tarah, and the fact that the book was regarded as a flop by many vendors, though it was true that he had skimmed it. In the end, he decided that any argument on the book's validity was futile, especially after what he had experienced on this night. (or day as it was; there was obviously a time discrepancy between Broodring and Pangaea) He was in Tarah's world, and he would just have to let her lead him by the hand.  
  
         Tarah was smiling again. "It's okay," she said. "I can tell you on the way, when we go visit the jaggerflies in the Great Prairie." Her face lit up with excitement and zeal, her fists clenching. "Just think about it, now we can have all sorts of adventures now with the plants and animals. Oh Andrew, I'm so happy you found me here!" She stepped up and hugged him, and Andy cautiously put a hand on her back, still a bit bewildered by this experience.  
  
         He suddenly felt her stiffen up like a ramrod. "Oh, I'm late!" she cried, backing away from him and turning around in a flurry of pigtails. "I gotta go!" She stepped into the middle of the clearing, where the mobile boulders had just departed from, and put her cupped hands to her mouth. The girl then made a high-pitched shrieking noise, like a kazoo modified on a computer. Afterwords, she folded her hands behind her back and waited expectantly, rocking back and forth on her heels.  
  
         Andy refrained from cocking his eyebrow, somehow knowing that his questions about this seemingly random action would be answered. Sure enough, a small lizard darted from the treetops and right up to Tarah's feet. She giggled at the agile amphibian hopped onto her clothes and crawled its way up to her shoulders, where it perched like a pirate captain's parrot. "Do you remember Cornflower?" she asked him, stroking the animal's neck with her finger.  
  
         "Yeah," he responded, recalling the last time he had seen the creature: lying in a fish tank in Tarah's room. The creature looked at him with glassy eyes, and made a noise that was something between a guffaw and a grunt. He winced a bit; Cornflower never really took to Andy, even though he had befriended its master. He could feel a grudge radiating from the supposedly simple creature; could it somehow be angry at the shameful way he had once treated Tarah in front of his former friends?  
  
         By now, Cornflower had leapt off Tarah's shoulder onto the grassy clearing. The girl was poised in front of the lizard and appeared to be chanting some sort of witchcraft; at least, with her eyes closed, that's how it appeared. Her right hand was thrust palm-out towards Cornflower, with her left gripping onto her wrist. Cornflower seemed to be responding, twitching in comprehension.  
  
         Then, the lizard suddenly jumped ten feet in the air, spinning around like some sort of aerial top. Its arms and legs became like putty, sloppily stretching out to ten times their usual length. The body and head soon followed in this transformation, as the form of the creature bulged and fluctuated in an attempt to become a scaled-up version of its original form. When Cornflower had landed, it crowded the clearing at around twenty times its former girth, with a new neck frill resembling the creature's namesake, and a certain underlying strength in its limbs.  
  
         Andy looked slack-jawed at the giant lizard, shook his head, and went back to looking slack-jawed again. He had thought Tarah would provided some semblance of normalcy to this fantastic world, but the issues had once again become further complicated. Cornflower regarded him with a casual, yet powerful stare; almost patronizing, if a lizard was capable of being so. 'Yes, Mr. Peer Pressure, I can kick your ass from here to Pangaea' is what the creature seemed to be saying to him.  
  
         With a accustomed manner born from practice, Tarah jumped an impossible five feet upwards to land on the lizard's back, straddling it as one would a steed. "C'mon, Andrew!" she called from atop Cornflower, offering an arm up.  
  
         Andy hesitated a moment at the proffered hand, regarding it as a ticket to another world. She would only drag him down deeper into this wonderland he had stumbled into. But again, he was in Tarah's world. He had always known, deep down, that any association with her would involve abandoning reservation and throwing himself into the unknown.  
  
         And after his previous trials, he had learned not to fear the darkness.  
  
         With a confident smile, he gave his trust to Tarah and let her pull him onto Cornflower. The lizard grunted at this unwelcome passenger, while Tarah rubbed its neck in an attempt to soothe it. Andy adjusted himself on the lizard's back, straddling it as Tarah had before him. Instinctively, he braced himself as if he had just slid into a circus cannon; somehow, he knew he would soon be moving very, very fast.  
  
         "Hi ho, Cornflower!" Tarah cried out, raising a fist in the air. "Let's go!"  
  
         With a massive leap, Cornflower bolted upwards through the canopies, and Andy could feel the leaves and small branches breaking against his back. He had time to hold one more breath from the clearing as the lizard sprung from the branches to bound across this mysterious land called Broodring.  
  
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Next Up- Part 2


	11. Different and Cool Fantastic Tales: Look What Tarah Can Do (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tarah takes Andy on a tour of Broodring.

D&C FT  
  
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*****  
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         The open skies stretched like a tarp above the world, covering everything with a veneer of snow-white and liquid-blue. It encompassed everything up to the horizon, but unlike much of the "real" world, there were no buildings or other man-made obstructions to break up the natural splendor. Broodring proved to be just as fantastic a place from on high as it did at ground level, with the giant orange mushrooms standing like grand monuments among the more subtle earth tones. And just ahead of the horizon, with leaves like green fire and a trunk easily half-a-kilometer in diameter, was a grand ash tree, large enough to make the oak trees look like broccoli tuffs.  
  
         Andy stared with mouth agape at the beastly ash dwarfing him even as Tarah's steed Cornflower traversed the treetops like a super-charged frog. He had heard about such a marvel of nature existing in his old childhood fairy tale books. It was Yggdrassil, the World Tree. A staple in all adventure stories, but right now, as real and solemn as the oak tree in his backyard.  
  
         Andy shook his head a few times to clear the webbing tying up his faculties. He was already in the middle of a conversation, and she was talking again. "So, the Green Vines style, right?" he piped up, going back to the last topic he could remember discussing.  
  
         "That's right!" Tarah said cheerfully, turning around in her seat to smile at him. "It's the ancient style used by druids to protect the satellite ash tree from Hitory Rancha's developers in 432 A.S., who wanted to make the world's first overcrowded subdivision."  
  
         "And so...you're druid?" he queried, trying to keep track of the info as he tried to keep his lunch down with all the jumps Cornflower was performing.  
  
         "Well, I'm more dryad than druid," the girl corrected, carefully guiding the lizard to the east. "I have about 10% dryad blood, so the masters of Broodring thinks that makes me ready to get some druid training anyway, even though I'm not directly related to them. I wish I was through. They live in such nice gardens, with the most beautiful insects and animals."  
  
         "Dryad...?" Andy pondered, lowers his head a bit to look at Cornflower's riveted skin underneath him. His mind was wracked with trying to figure out how to phrase this, to get at the hidden nature of his mysterious friend. "Tarah...what do you do here?" he asked her, knowing he would have to be specific.  
  
         Tarah looked at him strangely. "Didn't you get to Chapter 15 in Rizenfort's Big Book?" she asked him, taking her hands off Cornflower's neck. "I'm the Yggdrasseer, of course. I protect Broodring and the World Tree from any force that wants to use their power for evil."  
  
         This statement had only a brief moment to sink in before Tarah quickly turned her attention to a large meadow they were currently bounding towards. "Oh look, the jaggerflies are out now!" she called out, looking at the distant grassland as if its blades were grazing her cheeks. "Cornflower, land here!"  
  
         "J-Jaggerflies?" Andy gurbled, squinting hard at the mosaic pattern the grass seemed to create.  
  
         With a few quick hops, Cornflower moved from the canopies to the shorter maple trees until it was able to move to the meadow without injury. The lizard took a moment to adjust itself on terrafirma, its frill ruffling and fluctuating. It lowered its neck a moment later, and Tarah gracefully slid down and hopped over its head, landing upright on the plains like a gymnast trying to earn her 9.6. Andy was left to stumble off the creature from the side, as Cornflower decided to continue its obstinate attitude and raise its neck the second Tarah jumped off.  
  
         Andy took a brief moment to catch his breath, and followed his friend, who had moved towards the center of the field. Among the tall grass and marigolds, she waited like a pigtailed scarecrow, with arms outstretched to the light gales. The boy stood and waited just a few steps shy of Tarah, somehow feeling he was intruding. It was almost like she was some sort of goddess in this place, and one needed special permission just to speak in her presence.  
  
         "They're coming, Andrew," she said, as if to calm the tension in Andy's bones. Although the atmosphere felt as a church to him, Tarah's mouth was uplifted in a small, knowing smile. The mystery surrounding her actions was a bit unsettling, and Andy folded his arms in a small gesture of insecurity. That was as far as he would go to chickening out, though; the things Tarah did would always form into some semblance of logical reason, given time and patience.  
  
         The flickering of eleven small insects caught Andy's eyes, popping up through the grass. They were some sort of odd dragonfly creatures, with bodies that curved like fishing hooks and wings that made odd clicking noises as they waved through the air. Each one of them alighted on either one of Tarah's shoulders, making an uneven formation; five on the right and six on the left. Tarah's eyes had opened up now, and she was excitedly glancing between them as if they were a litter of newborn pups.  
  
         By her next actions, though, it was more likely that they were her friends, not her pets.  
  
         "Is everybody doing okay today?" she asked the one closest to her, just as if addressing one of the classmates she never talked to. "...that's good," she responded a moment later, in cue with a small twitch from the creature she was 'conversing' with. "I hope you guys managed to keep away from the hawks this time around." She laughed airily. "That was a rough one!"  
  
         "Oh Epheredora, you're hurt after all!" she suddenly cried, staring past the jaggerflies to the one on the end, who seemed to be favoring its right leg. "I told you not to tempt the hawks with a bad attitude! That's okay." She ended her lecture with a shrug and a smile. "I know you're strong! You guys are the best!"  
  
         In appreciation of her approval, the jaggerflies all departed from her shoulders and began to buzz around her. They flapped their translucent wings in her face, stinging her cheeks with small zephyrs. "Hey, that tickles!" she giggled, shielding her face in mock protest.  
  
         Andy smiled, walking up to her. "Looks like you're a little more popular here than at Starlight City," he said wryly, folding his arms over his stomach.  
  
         "Yeah!" Tarah replied, favoring him with a cheerful smile. "I really love it here!"  
  
         They both chuckled as the jaggerflies formed a ring around them in a sort of impromptu festival dance. "So, this Yggdraseer thing, it's pretty tough, right?" the boy asked.  
  
         "Oh, it's a very serious occupation," she replied seriously, nodding her head vigorously. "Not only do I have to defend Broodring from outside forces, but I also have to manage the balance of mana all the time. But that's okay, because I get a lot of neat powers to help me. I got a really cool one that lets me store and shoot out mana energy, but I have to be near Yggdrassil, so I can't do it whenever I want... "  
  
         "Wait wait, slow down!" Andy put up his hands as a defense mechanism. "First off, why it all this so important?"  
  
         "Because it's mana, Andrew!" Tarah giggled. "Mana is the force that binds nature together, all straight from the World Tree, Yggdrassil!"  
  
         "But Tarah, you like science and stuff, right?" The boy scratched his leafy locks in confusion. "All this seems more like...swords and sorcery."  
  
    "Oh, it's all important!" she explained. "But without mana, the laws of nature just wouldn't work right! Animals couldn't procreate, plants couldn't photosynthesize, and there's be no science to study anymore! Since it's a really big deal, I gotta make sure nothing happens to Broodring and Yggdrassil." She looked at him. "That's why I told you not to tell anyone about it. It someone bad knew how to get to Broodring, they could make some really wicked plans!"  
  
         Her eyes suddenly shot open. "Oh, that reminds me about Winston!" she exclaimed, looking off from Andy and into the distant trees. "He's been causing lots of trouble again!"  
  
         As Tarah dashed back to the resting Cornflower, Andy desperately scrambled to keep up with her. "Tarah, where're you going?" he gasped, the jaggerflies dispersing around him like a sparkling mist. "Who's Winston?"  
  
         "A giant man-eating plant," she said, reaching a hand out to him. "Come on!"  
  
         A scant few seconds later, they were flying once again.  
  
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*****  
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         "I don't see what the big deal is." The wheezing voice cut through their earlobes like a barbed wire. "I'm just sitting here by myself, drinking up what's right here waitin' for me."  
  
         "But you're hurting the rest of the plant life around you and disrupting the delicate balance!" Tarah insisted, gesturing broadly with her hands. "You need to stop that!"  
  
         Before Andy and Tarah, shrouded in the darker depths of Broodring, was an oversized venus fly-trap, straight out of a science fiction B movie. The bestial bulb was gifted with an elaborate root system, wrapping around the neighboring flora and obviously very capable of choking the life out of it. Its head was round as a cabbage, with a very human-like maw sporting a set of curved fangs. Right now, that maw seemed to be twisted into a very human-like expression; a smug grin, to be exact.  
  
         "What's it to you, anyway?" Winston drolled on lazily, waving a vine at them in an expression of lazire fare. "I'm just going by the rules of cause and effect. I'm hungry, so the other plants get a little less mana than usual."  
  
         "I changed my mind about that during a class assignment!" Tarah shot back, waving her arms frantically. "If you can talk to me, than you can control yourself and reach an equilibrium with the environment like all the other plants!"  
  
         "Bluh, you're a little baby Yggdraseer," the plant crooned, once again showing off his odd imitation of a smile. "A little brat playing at being grown up. What do you really know about the balance of nature anyway?"  
  
         The blood ran hot in Andy's veins at the insults. "I don't know half of what this Broodring place is all about, but I think we can both see a weed when we see it," he blurted out, stepping up to Winston in an act of defiance. "Why do you deserve more than your fair share?"  
  
         If Winston had eyes, they would have narrowed at that moment. "Who the heck are you?" he barked, regarding him contemptuously. "Some sort of puffy dandelion?"  
  
         "I'm Andrew Champion," the boy replied, subconsciously running a hand through his fluffy, dandelion-like hair. "Both me and Tarah know how to handle people...er, plants that push others around."  
  
         "Little sap, I could smack your roots clear across Broodring." A dangerous lilt entered into the tone of the sentient flower, his protruding vines thrashing with anticipation. "What do I have to be scared of?"  
  
         "Why don't you just try it?" Andy barked out, feeling his temples throb with adrenaline. "I'm been trained in the Double Helix style, buddy!"  
  
         "Dandelion!"  
  
         "Weed!"  
  
         "Andrew, Winston, stop it!" Tarah cried out, thrusting herself between them. She escorted Andy off to the side. "Andrew, what's wrong?" she asked, her face flush with concern. "Winston isn't that bad!"  
  
         "I'm sorry, I've been out in the sun too long," he relented, shaking his head. A small part of his brain balked at the absurdity of arguing with foliage, but it was quickly drowned out by how darned irritated he was with that plant. Going with the latter feeling, he approached the plant again, trying to keep his temper in check. "Look, uh, Winston..."  
  
         "I prefer 'Winst,'" Winston interrupted.  
  
         "Right, Winst." Andy waved his hand distractedly. "Why do you need all this extra nourishment. Moderation can be fun, too."  
  
         "I guess I'm bit of a sinner," Winston confessed unabashedly, his bulb retreating back into its nest of roots. "Lust doesn't do it for me, so why not a little Gluttony."  
  
         Andy sighed, slumping his shoulders in defeat. "He's pretty stubborn." he said, going back over to Tarah. "He's a plant that thinks like a human."  
  
         "Winston likes the human world a lot, and he sends a lot of spores out there," Tarah explained. "He even sides with the housing developers sometimes when I talk to him. He'll support anyone that takes the bull by the horns."  
  
         "Ouch." Andy winced with imagined pain.  
  
         "But you're funny, Andrew!" Tarah added, giggling lightly. "I've never seen someone get into a fight with Winston before."  
  
         Andy blushed slightly, wondering once again if this mysterious land was playing a joke on him. But if it makes Tarah happy, why not?  
  
         Andy and Tarah smiled at each other gently; Winston regarding their moment with a cynical air about him.  
  
         And then, all of a sudden, a shadowy swath broke from the darkness and plunged onto Andy with the force of a flying shoulder tackle. The blow knocked the boy clear to the hard earth, and he struggled amongst the leaves as the mysterious form pushed him into the dirt. Something sharp and slick with saliva was shining in front of his face, and he instinctively recoiled from it. "W-whug...?" he choked incoherently, the fight-or-flight instinct within him flaring up frantically.  
  
         "Andrew!!" Tarah cried out desperately. Sparing no second, she reached behind her for the staff still bound to her back. Bringing it up to bear, she swung the implement in a wide arc, knocking the shadowy form off into a hardwood tree. She quickly shifted the staff in her hands and went to tend to the boy, who was gasping desperately for air.  
  
         "What...what's going on?" he managed to get out, leaning lightly on Tarah for support. His eyes darted surreptitiously to the weapon in the girl's hand. The staff appeared to be formed of a large, green rose stem, with a cluster of thorns on the bottom and a crystalline blossom at the top. A small green light seemed to be radiating from within the closed petals.  
  
         "Bed Bugs," Winston answered him, a strange anxiety in the twitch of his vines. "They've been attacking Broodring for a good while now."  
  
         "Bed Bugs?" Andy groaned, his eyebrows furrowing in wild confusion.  
  
         "They're nefarious Dream Demons that appear when people sleep," Tarah said quickly, her eyes darting about like fireflies. "Their insect forms are kind of neat, but they're not real bugs."  
  
         Andy and Tarah's attention was drawn back toward the shadow form, which had regained its footing on the forest floor. The Bed Bug, as it were, appeared as a pitchblack cross between a louse and a cockroach, as large as a medium-sized man. It stood on its hind legs like a circus dog, and its lanky front legs spread and folded like snapping pincers. With sharp fangs jutting out from its maw, and tiny flightless wings pinned to its back, the Bed Bug was the most vile, disturbing thing Andy had seen in his life...and worse still, it was not alone.  
  
         From behind the curtain of trees, a host of Bed Bugs identical to the first joined their brother, and there were now easily a dozen of them in Winston's small clearing. They surrounded the trio, forming a lopsided ellipse that threatened to collapse in on them like an art tool in a computer paint program. Andy and Tarah backed up against each other instinctively; Winston thrashed his vines as if trying to ward off evil spirits. And a fiery ember grew in Tarah's eyes, her teeth gnashed like a rabid rodent.  
  
         "I won't let them harm my garden or my friends..." the girl muttered, her grip tightening on her rose staff.  
  
         "Andrew, run away!" Tarah called out, rushing from his side as if spurred. And then she was spinning towards them in a twisting round-off, right into the midst of the Bed Bugs' reach.  
  
         "Tarah!!" Andy cried out. But Tarah was already upon the dark beasts, wielding the large staff as if it were a marching band baton. She bat away a pair of the Bed Bugs with two wide swings of her staff, and retreated into a back flip that carried her away from another's pinching grip. The girl popped up behind the devil, and clocked it on the head with a single hard thrust of the crystal rosebud. She then shifted her weight to avoid a jab from a Bed Bug's spindly leg, fell to her knees, and rebounded at the creature with a wide, crescent slash.  
  
         "Come on, sapling!" Winston cheered gruffly from the sidelines. "Even a baby Yggdraseer can take on these little deviants!"  
  
         Andy stared at her transfixed, his jaw hanging down in a perfect emulation of a nutcracker soldier. She...she's amazing...  
  
         With the spectacle the girl was creating, none of the Bed Bugs had any prerogative to attack Andy and Winston. Tarah defended them perfectly, moving through the forest like wild fire, trying her hardest to claim this battlefield. But she remained outnumbered; the resourceful insects pressed their advantage without reservation. And although Tarah was much faster than them, she was at a loss to avoid this many attacks from this many opponents for this much time.  
  
         "Eerk!" she winced, as the front leg of an approaching Bed Bug grazed her right cheek. She swung about haphazardly, knocking it away with a rather clumsy slash of her staff.  
  
         "No, Tarah!" Andy's body coiled up like a python. "Get away from her!!" he roared, and all notions of fight-or-flight quickly shifted to "fight." Rushing the Bed Bug closest to Tarah, the boy flung out the strongest spinning kick his competence of the martial arts could muster. Unfortunately, his power was still too modest for making a dent in the creature's thick shell, and he bounced away and onto the ground, his leg pulsing with a liquid pain.  
  
         "Don't, Andrew!" Tarah said, batting away another Bed Bug. "Just go!" She frantically whirled around in a half-moon slash in an attempt to chase away the shadowy beasts.  
  
         The Bed Bugs let out a gargled wail of triumph, ready to prey upon Tarah's new found weakness. Together as one, they began to close in.  
  
         ...A piercing light shattered the clammy forest darkness, and Andy heard the unmistakable shriek of cold steel. Six of the twelve devils were sent flying, their bodies scattered all over the improvised arena. The boy's eyes caught the naked, gleaming blade of a cane sword, blessed "shide" paper strips dangling from its jet black grip. Its swordmaster, a thirty-something black man with short cropped hair and a trim beard, held the weapon aloft as if heralding a new dawn.  
  
         "...P-Professor Clark?!" Andy gasped.  
  
         Mr. Clark stared at the prone creatures with a battle-forged leer, and flicked out a hidden braid tucked within his collar that Andy had never noticed before. With two deft motions, he slipped the blade back into its scabbard, the sword once again taking the appearance of a gentleman's walking stick. Holding his weapon in a traditional samurai sword-drawing form, he drew upon all the subtle strength hidden in his wiry form. He bent his knees, his fingers dancing about the sword's grip.  
  
         "SSSOOII!" he suddenly shouted, drawing his blade in a blazing strike that sent out a wave of compressed, superheated air. Then, a large, fiery explosion rocked the Bed Bugs, the flames and smoke rolling into each other like a hellish armadillo.  
  
         "Tarah, now!!" the man's commanding voice sounded out, his leaden gaze never leaving his burning opponents.  
  
         "Okay, Professor!" Tarah called back. Spinning her weapon upright, she adopted a pose resembling an ancient religious deacon. Her eyes closed shut in prayer as she mumbled her meditations to the rose staff. A gentle wind began to form at her feet, wrapping her up like a warm fleece. The flowers and grass moved about as if in synchronization to her chanting; even Winston seemed to be responding slightly to the ritual.  
  
         "Great World Tree Yggdrassil, give me the power of my birthright!" the pigtailed girl called out to the ancient land of Broodring. "Bless me with the full gift of the dryads, for the sake of Pangaea!"  
  
         Andy was forced to avert his eyes as a blinding flash lit up the trees for one fleeting instant. And then it was done, and he could peek through his fingers at the newest wonder in this world.  
  
         Before the young lad now, in place of the girl he knew as Tarah Reichardt, was a figure that could easily be described as a mythic being of old. She wore a frayed elvin dress that ended at her knees, a garb befitting a true wood nymph. Her braids had morphed into twin twisting tendrils of silken green hair, and two disks of light levitated in front of her eyes to simulate the glasses that had disappeared from her face. And yet, when this mythic being turned her gentle gaze upon Andy, he knew in his heart that this was truly Tarah after all, and he removed his hands from his face with complete trust in his incredible friend.  
  
         "The true form of the Yggdraseer..." Winston whispered, an uncharacteristic reverence in his raspy voice. "Wilder than the wilds..."  
  
         Yggdraseer Tarah turned to face the recovering Bed Bugs, who were oozing with a viscous indigo fluid. And with an otherworldly squeal, she unleashed the fury of nature upon her hapless foes. "HAIIII!!!!"  
  
-  
-  
*****  
-  
-  
  
         In the front yard of the Reichardt residence, the baby ash tree was glowing with the buildup of mana energy. Flashing multiple shades of green luminescence, it lit up the yard like a holiday light show. With one final release, it ceased its proud display, as Andy, Mr. Clark, and a human Tarah Reichardt were deposited onto the grassy lawn like bullet train passengers. Save for the small green embers of ethereal energy that hung in the air, there was no evidence that they had been anywheree other than their hometown of Starlight City.  
  
         "See, Andrew, these are the satellite ash trees of Yggdrassil!" Tarah explained, walking across the grass as she were just out for a neighborhood stroll. "I can enter and leave Broodring from any one of these!"  
  
         "So this is how I ended up there," Andy said. "But if anyone can just touch this tree, why haven't more of us gotten in?"  
  
         "I suspect that it was your connection to Tarah that allowed your passage," Mr. Clark supposed, massassing his goatee. "The allies of the Yggdrasseer are always welcome in Broodring, so the tree responded to you. This is how I am able to travel between the worlds, so is it with you."  
  
         "What an incredible trip..." The boy regarded the ash tree with subtle awe.  
  
         His teacher's eyebrows furrowed. "Andy, your earlier actions were reckless and undisciplined." Mr. Clark spoke sharply, that rigid scowl once again on his face. "Good intentions are no excuse for poor planning. Don't endanger Tarah if you want to a remain part of our world."  
  
         "I know, I know," Andy hastily apologized, trying to wave off the criticism. "But sir, why were you there to help us with those bug creatures? And what was that thing you did with the sword?"  
  
         The normally reserved professor lowered his head, glancing solemnly at the cane sword by his side. "When I was around your age, I began training in the art of sword sorcery," he said. "I have been a guest of the mystical realms for a very long time now. The Manticore Sword can release a combustion wave by storing magical energy when sheathed. It's simply a trinket in the end, as Tarah's Crystal Rose will be much stronger once she grows into her power."  
  
         "The Professor helps me sometimes when I go to Broodring," Tarah explained, walking over to her teacher's side. "He's really fun to talk to about things there, even more fun than talking about the bugs I caught!" She put a hand to her dimple, struck by a sudden notion. "Although the plants and animals there don't really like him very much. It think it's because he uses the fire sword, and that hurts plants."  
  
         "All this time, a samurai warrior in Starlight Jr. High." Andy shook his head in astonishment. "I never knew..."  
  
         "Andy, none of it has anything to do with English," the man reminded him, with a bit of reluctant humor tugging at his lip.  
  
         Tarah smiled and absently tickled Cornflower, who had reverted back into a normal pet lizard. "So, Andrew, I guess you think I'm even weirder now, huh!" she said cheerfully, without an ounce of shame.  
  
         Then again, why should she be ashamed? "I think you're fantastic," Andy told her, placing a hand on her shoulder. "I'm glad to be a part of Broodring with you."  
  
         She beamed like a bespectacled sunrise, positively glowing in the silent night. Even Cornflower seemed a little more docile now, his hidden frill revealing itself and bristling with approval.  
  
         "But Winston still ticks me off," the boy added, a small growl rumbling in his throat.  
  
         Tarah starred at him as though he was a man-eating machine from the planet Narcillia. Then, she exploded into a near-hysterical fit of laughter, grabbing onto her stomach as if it would burst.  
  
                 END


End file.
